The Fabulous Belles
by TVH Bookfan
Summary: A reimagining of the Beatles as a girl group called the Belles. Joan Lennox, Paula McGuire, Gina Harris, and Rhiannon Steel went from being working class girls from Liverpool to some of the most successful stars of the 60s. Along the way, they bond as friends, fall in love, and discover more about their identities and world views. Elements of Across the Universe are used.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Welcome all readers! Before you go on reading, please keep in mind that these characters are only partially based off of the actual Beatles, their family members, lovers, and friends. Although I take many details out of their biographies, they are different in some ways. One of the biggest differences is that Joan Lennox (based on John Lennon) has a British father and an American mother, just like Jude in Across the Universe, and she gets the chance to bond with both parents during her teenage years, whereas John Lennon only really got to know his mother at that time. Also, almost all characters are gender reversed versions of the real life people involved. The following shows a list of characters mentioned in this chapter and the real life person they're based on:**

 **Joan Lennox: John Lennon**

 **Paula McGuire: Paul McCartney**

 **Gina Harris: George Harrison**

 **Rhiannon Steel: Ringo Starr**

 **Laurence "Laurie" Edwards: Linda McCartney**

 **Yuki Ogawa: Yoko Ono**

 **Christian Warren: Cynthia Lennon**

 **Harold Edwards: Heather McCartney**

 **Stanley Edwards: Stella McCartney**

 **Martin Edwards: Mary McCartney**

 **Jenna Edwards: James McCartney**

 **Jessica Warren: Julian Lennon**

 **Shannon Ogawa: Sean Lennon**

 **Daniella Harris: Dhani Harrison**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Across the Universe or anything related to the Beatles.**

Prologue

December 1980

The past week had been one of the worst in Paula McGuire's life.

It all started the morning of December 9, as Paula had been sleeping in after another long day at the record studio in London. She'd been working on getting the final version of "Keeping the Spring" through, which was scheduled to be released as a single in the early days of 1981. As usual, her husband Laurie Edwards, an American photographer, had accompanied her, taking pictures of her and her band mates and offering words of encouragement when it started getting tough.

And it was Laurie that woke her up that morning, shaking her shoulder rather roughly as opposed to his usual gentle manner, and saying, "Paula, get up. There's something major on the news that you must see."

"If it's something about the pot incident from last spring, then I don't want to hear another word about it, Laurie," Paula grumbled, hiding under the sheets to ignore her husband.

"It's not that, Paula. It's about Joan," Laurie said. His voice sounded very urgent.

"Joan?" Paula asked, now sitting upright on the bed. "What trouble could she possibly get into these days?"

Joan Lennox was Paula's friend and former band mate from the Belles, one of the most successful girl groups of the sixties, which also consisted of Gina Harris and Rhiannon Steel. Having faced many hardships since childhood, including having to be brought up by her uncle after her parents divorced when she was five and then losing her father when she was seventeen, she always appeared to be two different people to Paula. She tended to either be a delightful free-spirit, with a wicked sense of humor while also being philosophical about pretty much every question life had to offer, or a cold bully who could lose her temper at any moment. Her bad side unfortunately resulted in her disastrous first marriage, which involved many disagreements with her first husband, Christian Warren, the constant ignoring of her daughter Jessica, and cheating on both her part and Christian's as the Belles' fame increased.

Around 1966, Joan met Japanese artist Yuki Ogawa, and the two of them ended up starting an affair and getting marrying in 1969 and engaging in political activism and highly experimental music projects that started becoming a higher priority to Joan than her work with the Belles. This became one of the many factors leading to their breakup at the end of the decade. But in spite of the many troubles that followed her afterwards, Joan was now leading a stable life for the first time in years, having been fully settled in New York City with Yuki and their five-year-old daughter Shannon, and looking happier than Paula had ever seen her before. She'd dedicated most of her time to raising Shannon in recent years, but had been working on an album with Yuki for several months, having only released it a month before.

Because of this, Paula couldn't understand what news Joan could be associated with that had Laurie looking so worried. And upon seeing all three of her youngest children already huddled in front of the television, which was tuned into the BBC news, it became clear to her that it was much more serious than she could have imagined.

Martin had his arms around little Jenna, who had her head buried in her brother's night shirt while whimpering quietly, while Stanley, who at the age of eight was the oldest of the children present, kept his eyes glued to the television set with a sad expression on his face. "Poor Shannon," he whispered.

 _Shannon?_ Paula thought, thinking of all the reasons why the little girl could be featured in the news. _What happened to her? Was she kidnapped, or diagnosed with a terminal illness?_

But it wasn't Shannon's name that Paula heard coming out of the lips of the solemn-faced reporter on the television, in the alarming sentence that would change her life forever:

"Reports of the murder of Joan Lennox have so far been devastating for many residents of New York City, and we can already hear a group of mourners singing some of her most famous songs through a gathering that's taken place in Central Park. We have yet to get a statement from Yuki Ogawa, Joan's now widowed husband, but reports on this horrific incident will continue to be reported as the day goes on. As Joan loved to say, 'Don't rest a minute, because justice will come soon.' "

As soon as she heard this, Paula could feel her body trembling, and a wave of warmness running through her head. "No," she said softly. "This can't be happening. Perhaps this is just another nasty prank of Joan's, like when she ducked into a tidal wave and remained hidden underwater during our first holiday together to make us believe she'd drowned. Maybe that's all…"

And before she knew it, she fell on her knees onto the floor and began sobbing hysterically. "No!" she cried out. "Oh, God, why? Why did this have to happen to Joan of all people? Why, oh why?"

Laurie ran over to her, embracing her while the children looked on at their mother with much more worry than before.

But Paula took little notice of this. Instead, she felt herself being transported back to that awful afternoon when she was fourteen and had been called into the headmistress' office to get the news that her father had just died after a six month battle with lung cancer. Back then, she'd experienced the same sensation as she did now, and would have fainted if the school secretary hadn't helped her over to a chair. It had been as she was seated that she'd buried her head in her hands and burst into a hysterical sobbing fit, with Miss Anderson and the secretary doing nothing besides staring sadly at her, only going on to give a series of apologizes once Paula had calmed down a little.

However, in several ways, these were two very different situations. Paula had known her father would pass away sooner or later, with the long hospital visits she made with her mother and sister serving as constant reminders of how much weaker he was becoming each day. Joan, however, had been at her best these past couple of months. Her long phone calls to Paula provided her with detailed accounts of her latest songs, from "Beautiful Girl" to "Let Us Begin Again", how much help Yuki was always giving her, and all the small things Shannon was learning to accomplish. "Yuki says she's singing almost as well as me now," had been part of her latest account. "If you heard how well she could sing 'Our World', I swear it would blow your mind away."

And yet, just like Paula's father all those years, Joan was now gone. As problematic and unstable as she'd sometimes been, she was still one of Paula's best friends, and would go as far as possible to live out her mission to hate no one and bring a little peace for everyone. And yet, some evil person out there failed to see how good she was deep down, and had decided to end it all for her.

Paula's thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the phone. Laurie had picked it up, and upon hearing who it was, the look of pity on his face increased, and he answered in a slow and gentle voice. _Good old Laurie,_ Paula thought. _He always seems to know the right thing to say to people during times of trouble. If only I could be just as calm right now._

"Paula, it's Yuki. He says he just got back home from the hospital, and has something important to share with us," Laurie said.

Paula immediately got up and took the phone from Laurie. There was a time when she wouldn't have been willing to utter a word to Yuki, with the only reason for her being civil to him being that Joan loved him so much. Yuki tended to be reserved towards most people, sometimes treating those he disapproved of with coldness and arrogance, although he was often deeply devoted to anyone he cared about, including Joan and now Shannon. But now, he appeared to have gotten more empathetic over time, and some even regarded him with as much fondness as they had for Joan.

"Hello?" she asked once she had the phone in hand.

"Paula? Is that you?" Yuki asked.

"Yes, Yuki. I…I can't even begin to express how sorry I am about what happened. Joan me-meant as much to me as she did to you, and I intend to he-help you in any way I can," Paula said. Her voice was still shaking a little from all the crying she'd done.

"I know," Yuki said, speaking in a very low voice. "I saw what happened to her with my own eyes, and I'll never be able to forget how awful it was."

"Of course, you won't. You can never forget something like that," Paula said. "Laurie said you had something important to share with us. What is it?"

"I'll be starting to arrange Joan's funeral tomorrow," Yuki said. "If all goes well, it should take place on the twelfth. It would mean a lot to me if you, Gina, and Rhiannon would all show up, as I'm sure Joan would have felt the same."

"I'll be coming for sure, and I think Laurie will too. Where will the funeral be taking place?"

"At St. Mark's Episcopalian Church here in New York. We all know Joan wasn't religious, but one of her biggest wishes was that she'd be buried beside her mother, seeing as how she'd spent the last days of her life so close to us. She figured that when the time came, being buried in a church was a small price to pay if it meant she could rest beside one of the people she loved the most."

Paula couldn't help but smile at this. Back in their early days as the Belles, Joan would have shaken in horror at the suggestion of a church burial, given how ardent of an atheist she'd been back then. But some time with a guru in India, which had resulted in a spiritual awakening for Gina, had given Joan a more universalist approach to religion and spirituality (it helped that Yuki was a Buddhist), although she remained slightly skeptical about organized religion. And of course, the bond she'd developed with her American mother in her teenage years had been carried on as she became famous, up until her death from breast cancer in 1976 in an apartment only a couple blocks away from where Joan and Yuki currently lived, so it was possible that she'd added being buried beside her into the updated version of her will.

"All right, then. Joan always liked having the final say, I guess. Is that all?" Paula said.

"For now, I guess," Yuki said.

"Okay. And if you don't mind telling me, have you told Shannon what happened yet?"

"No. When I got back, she was fast asleep. I intend to tell her what happened first thing tomorrow. I'd thought she'd already be asleep when Joan suggesting going back, and I said this to her to try convincing her to go out to dinner with our record producer. But she wouldn't listen; she just had to go home to say goodnight to Shannon. And at the end, she got shot before we could enter the building."

"Wow. All that just for your daughter. How sad that must be," Paula said.

"Yes, but the past can't be undone. Sooner or later, we'll all have to move on," Yuki said.

…

Three days later, Paula and Laurie arrived in New York City along with all four of their children, including Harold, Laurie's eighteen-year-old son from his first marriage, who'd been away at the University of London upon hearing the news. They hadn't wanted the kids to come at first, fearing that the funeral would traumatize them, but they were all determined to come, especially Stanley, who was probably the closest to Shannon out of all the others. And at the end, Paula reluctantly convinced Laurie to have everyone in the family come along.

Upon making it to St. Mark's, one of the first people Paula saw standing around the church steps was Gina Harris. She was wearing a black overcoat and hat, and kept looking around the place while her daughter Daniella, who at twelve already looked a lot like her mother with her light brown hair and small height, took immediate notice of the McGuires' presence. "Mum," she said, placing a hand around Gina's shoulder. "Paula and Laurie are here."

This was enough for Gina's focus to return, and the first thing she did was dash over to Paula and hug her. "Oh, Paula. I was almost worried that you wouldn't be showing up at all. Rhiannon and I both got here within a day, and we were almost convinced that all those reports of you being indifferent towards Joan's death were true."

"Gina, I thought seventeen years of fame had already thought you to never trust the media," Paula said. "The reporters practically stormed into our house, and when Laurie couldn't get them to go away, I simply told them that it was all sad and a drag. I couldn't come up with anything better to say because of how overwhelmed I was. As for why we're late, that's what happens when you must plan arrangements for six people in New York. Not one of the kids was willing to stay behind."

"Well, I always knew your kids were complete angels," Gina said with a smile. "Daniella has also been a dear this whole time. When reporters came to our place, she was the one who spoke to them, explaining that I couldn't give a statement at the time because I was spending a full day in meditation, which I actually was. I can't even begin to describe how much it calmed me down after getting the news, since I felt like I was on the brink of an emotional breakdown. By the second day, I was very relaxed, managing to both give a proper statement and get Daniella and myself over here."

"I'm glad you found a way to help yourself," Paula said. "Do you know how Rhiannon's doing?"

"Pretty well, given everything that's happened. She was the first of us to get here, and has been an immense help for everyone involved in this incident. She even agreed to share a hotel room with Jessica so that she wouldn't have to pay for one herself. However, none of her kids showed up. They're either busy or too upset to come along with her."

"Good for her," Paula said.

Gina then turned to Laurie. "And how are you doing, Laurie?" she asked.

"I'm adjusting, just as I believe everyone else is," Laurie answered. "Paula was in such a bad state when she heard the news that I don't think she would have handled it well if I hadn't been around, but she's slowly getting used to it. Same with the kids. Jenna couldn't sleep at all that first night, and we had to let her stay in bed with us because she kept worrying that Joan's killer would come after us next. The others didn't have it any easier, but have done their best to stay strong."

Stanley nodded slowly as his father spoke. "Yeah, Dad, but how long do we have to wait to get in the church? I bet Yuki and Shannon are probably sure we won't show up by now."

Laurie smiled. "You got a point there, chap," he said. Then, turning to the others, he said, "So, shall we walk in and face this?"

"Let's do it," Paula said.

And with that said, they all walked into the church together. Since it was early, it wasn't very full yet, but there were already several people present. They found Rhiannon sitting alongside Jessica around the middle of the church. Rhiannon waved at them, but Jessica didn't appear to acknowledge their presence. All she did was stare at the coffin that was already in the center of the church with a glare on her face. Her relationship with her mother had always been strained because of all Joan had done when she was little, and her relationship with Yuki was even worse. In fact, if it hadn't been for the birth of Shannon, she probably wouldn't have been visiting them as often as she now did. And so far, there was no sign of Christian at all. No statement had been released from him at all, with all attempts to reach him being failures.

It was in the rows that were closest to the center where Paula found Yuki and Shannon seated. Yuki was dressed all in black, with his head bowed and his lips moving without a sound being made, as if he was praying. Shannon was wearing a black jumper and a white blouse, and she was kneeling on the pews with her hands folded, but whether she was praying or just imitating the actions of the people around her was something Paula couldn't tell. However, despite how serious she looked, Paula smiled upon realizing that she had the famous Tom Baker scarf from _Doctor Who_ wrapped around her neck. It had been a gift Joan had given her during a family visit to London, since Shannon was a huge fan of the show upon watching it on PBS and it was one of the few TV shows Joan let her watch (in large part because she'd secretly liked it herself since it first aired in the UK in the sixties). It was a sure sign that the little girl was inheriting her mother's sense of humor if she'd dare wear it to her funeral. Joan would probably be delighted.

Upon turning around to see the McGuires and Harrises close by, Shannon beamed and turned to her father. "Daddy, Paula and Laurie are here!" she called out a little too loudly.

"Quiet down, Shannon. I'm trying to pray," Yuki said in a gentle yet firm voice. But when he noticed everyone around them, he gave a small smile and said, "Welcome everyone. It's good to know that you all took the time to come pay your respects to Joan. I know we've had our differences in the past, but I think the fact that we can all come together in a time like this means a lot."

"Thank you, Yuki. I'm sure Joan would have been happy about it as well," Paula said.

Laurie then went over to Shannon and gave her a hug, telling her he was sorry for all she'd been going through. Paula followed suit shortly after, saying, "Hello, Shannon. How are you doing?"

"Okay. A little sad, but mostly okay," Shannon said.

"Are you sure?" Paula asked.

Shannon turned to see if her father was listening, and upon seeing that he'd returned to saying his prayers, she said in a low voice, "I mean, I try being okay when I'm around Daddy. He's been very sad about Mom getting shot, and almost doesn't say a word to anyone besides me. Sometimes, when I'm alone in my room and Daddy's not around, I do cry about it. But I try not to let other people know when I'm sad."

It took all of Paula's strength not to break down upon hearing this. She'd known that Shannon was quite bright for her age, but she'd never guess that she'd act so maturely about this. She seemed to be highly aware of how hard this was for her father, and was trying her best not to make him anymore sad than he already was. Any adult who saw this would be impressed for sure, and would probably praise her for how good she was, but Paula knew it was best to just let Shannon express herself as she wished without such reactions. Having four children made her understand this quite well.

"But can you tell me something, Paula?" she asked.

"What is it?"

"Do you think the dead can come back to life?"

Paula chuckled. Shannon's imagination was still as big as ever. "I don't think I've ever seen it happen myself, Shannon, but the world is full of mysteries. There are certain things people can never fully know, and one of them is what happens when we pass away."

"What do you think happens?"

Paula was left silent for a while. Then she said, "I think we all fall into a peaceful sleep, and that if we do awake, things are better for us than when we were alive. Maybe we'll see our loved ones who died before us, or maybe we'll become part of something bigger than this world offers."

"That sounds nice. But Daddy says that Mom will probably come alive again as the princess of England, since he thinks that anyone who's good when they're alive is born again as someone who's good and important."

This had been another joke of Joan's back in the day. She'd always said that if her life did go on after she died, then she'd want to spend it as part of the British royal family, because perhaps then she could help get things accomplished in Britain. "Because everybody knows the bloody royals are always so lazy," she'd added to emphasize her point.

"Well, me and your dad are just going to have to agree to go on with our different views," Paula said. "No one ever seems to agree on that question, but I think it's better to just let people believe as they choose instead of always fighting about it like some other people like doing.

"Me too," Shannon said. "So, can I talk to Stanley and the others now?"

"Go ahead, but be sure to stay quiet."

Shannon nodded, and turned eagerly to the other kids. Stanley instantly complimented her on the scarf, while Martin and Jenna asked her how she was. Gina and Daniella took seats next to Yuki, while Laurie remained close to Paula's side. Paula was left with nothing to do except reflect back on her time with Joan, especially during their early years of friendship, when she'd been convinced there was no one else in the world who had as much in common with her as Joan did.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks to everyone that's reviewed so far, including guest Johnny Luv. This next chapter jumps back to the 1950s, where we'll get to know Joan Lennox and how she first encountered her future bandmates** **. Keep in mind that several events in this story are very AU, and therefore aren't fully consistent with biographical facts about the Beatles. These time jumps will continue throughout the story, so expect me to be returning to 1980 in chapter 4.**

Liverpool, England 1956

Robinson's Records was always the place for young people to get their favorite music, but in the past year, the small business was booming. Mr. Jim Robinson, the middle-aged owner, would later claim he once believed that if the current music scene stayed the same, he might have been able to retire as a millionaire.

In just two years, the music scene had changed drastically, with radio stations across Britain going from playing ballads and jazz to a new style the teenagers were calling rock and roll, which all started because of a big American hit from Bill Haley and his Comets called "Rock Around the Clock" in late 1955. The song had resulted in a shift to a lively beat in music which sometimes scandalized the most prudent adults but which young people had instantly fallen in love with. And with the latest big name in music being Elvis Presley, a man who shook his hips on television with little shame while singing about jailhouses or hound dogs, rock and roll was bigger than ever, and the desire for this rebellious music style filled teenagers with a form of zeal they would carry on for the rest of their lives.

But for Jim Robinson, who preferred the music of Glenn Miller and Bing Crosby, this music was mostly part of a fad that was good for business. "I never had anything against Elvis or any of the other American blokes, but at the time, I saw them as just new popular singers who made fun music that would probably fade away in a year or two. I never could have predicted that people would go around dressing like Elvis for fun twenty years later, or that they would eventually inspire some of my young customers to become just as big, if not bigger, than they were," he said in a 1982 interview.

And one of these young customers was none other than Joan Lennox, who came in faithfully to the store every Friday afternoon along with her best friend, Sharron Stevens. Her uncle Mike gave her an allowance at the end of the week if she managed to get through school without getting into trouble. His expectation was that she'd save the money for school supplies and clothes, given how the family had to make good use of whatever savings they had.

However, Joan always had a habit of putting the things she wanted ahead of the things she needed. And so, instead of putting what she called her "good behavior allowance" into the money jar Uncle Mike had made her keep since she was eight, she hid it away in her small brown purse, left the house with Sharron, claiming that they were heading to her place to do homework, and go instead into Robinson's Records, where there were always crowds of teenagers digging for the best deals on the latest records. Although she didn't always buy something, she had to keep track of everything new so that she'd have some idea of what she should be listening to.

But one Friday, Joan came in much earlier than usual with Sharron. It was around nine o'clock, and Jim Robinson was drinking a cup of Earl Grey Tea while reading _The Guardian,_ with a Frank Sinatra record being played in the background. He looked up from the newspaper in surprise when he saw the two girls, whom he'd gotten to know and like over the years, walking in. However, because of his typical hospitable personality, he didn't want to lecture them for not being at school. Instead, he gave them a warm smile and said, "Good morning, girls. There's no better treat for a man like myself than to get early morning customers."

Joan smiled back at him. "Good morning, Mr. Robinson. Given how bad of a cold I got earlier this week, Uncle Mike wouldn't let me even consider going to school. But since this place is only a block away and I'm feeling a little a better today, he figured there was no harm in me coming over if Sharron would keep me company."

There was some truth to what she was saying. Joan had caught a bad cold around Tuesday, and so Uncle Mike had let her stay at home for two days. But the day before, seeing how much better she'd gotten, Mike had dragged Joan out of bed, saying to her when she'd protested, "I'm not having you stay lying around doing nothing when you're perfectly capable of walking over to school, young lady!"

"Well, you do seem to have gotten better, given how you're looking today," Mr. Robinson said. Then, placing the red basket of sweets all the teenagers loved on the front counter, he said, "Why not get a piece of chocolate for all your troubles this week?"

"You don't have to ask twice," Sharron said, smiling as eagerly as a puppy upon seeing the basket. But Joan beat her to it, grabbing four pieces of bite-sized chocolates before Sharron could get her hands on them. Joan was only ever allowed to have sweets two times a week at home, a rule mostly enforced by her Aunt Gretchen, an avid nutritionist, but which Uncle Mike had been slowly buying into in the five years since he'd married her. However, as with her money, Joan always found a way around the rules, whether by eating leftover pastries from Sharron's lunch or by buying chocolate bars at the drug store close to school.

Sharron had frowned in annoyance upon seeing Joan getting something before herself once again. "What will it take for you to wait for something at least once in your life, Joan?"

Joan smiled mischievously. "You know I can never wait for anything, Sharron. My patience level is very low."

"Just as you can't wait to meet your…"

"Shut up!" Joan said in as low a voice as she could muster. "Nobody can figure that out, okay? Let the secret out and I'll never speak to you again."

The real reason the girls were playing hooky was because last week Joan had gotten a letter from her American mother, who'd been raised in New York state, saying that she planned to stay in Liverpool for two weeks with the intention of seeing her. Joan had begged Uncle Mike to let her spend this afternoon over the Holly Hills Inn, where she'd be arriving at around eleven this morning, but he'd refused.

"It makes no sense for her to just pop up in England again for the first time in Lord knows how long, after not having written a letter to you since you were eight or nine or sending in a dollar of support, and automatically have you as part of her life again. There's just no way I can accept that," Uncle Mike had told her.

"And from all your uncle has told me about her, she sounds like a bad influence. The way I see things, that woman should never have been allowed to have children in the first place. Women like her are the reasons we've got asylums, after all," Aunt Gretchen said, seeming all too glad to dismiss Joan's mother so easily.

"Don't you dare talk that way about someone you don't even know!" Joan shouted. "And it's just unfair for you to not let her see me at all, Uncle Mike! Perhaps then I wouldn't be as bad as you both claim I am."

"Joan, we've discussed this before," Uncle Mike tried to explain. "Your mother was emotionally unwell for years, which was the reason your parents separated. She'd tried forcing you to choose between her and your father when you were only five, something a good mother would never do to a child. She'd kept in contact with us for several years as she was going through treatment in New York, which was a good thing, but the moment she told us she was well again, we stopped hearing from her at all. You just can't trust someone who does this, even if she is your mother."

"But if she was mentally ill, then the way she treated me wasn't her fault," Joan protested.

"That may be true, but that still doesn't excuse how she stopped contacting you after she got well again. It will take more than just a letter sent in six years too late for her to make up for that," Uncle Mike said.

"Besides, isn't it enough that we're letting you see your father again every other weekend?" Aunt Gretchen cut in again. "He's been giving you guitar lessons, introducing you to all the bloody rock and roll singers out there, and pretty much encouraging all your reckless behavior. I can only imagine how much worse it would get if you saw that mother of yours."

And those weekends were probably the happiest times Joan had these days. Unlike all the other adults she knew, her father never endlessly lectured her for her mistakes, even if was something as bad as getting into fights with girls at school. Instead, he patiently listened to Joan's side of the story and gave her advice afterwards on how she could fix things. When that was done, they both took out their guitars and he would teach her how to play some of the latest rock hits or some old folk song he'd been listening to lately. For a man who made a living through three odd jobs, he knew more about the arts than anyone else Joan knew, and constantly encouraged her to pursue her music and art ambitions. "You'll never know if you can be successful in anything unless you try it," he liked telling her, and Joan took this advice to heart.

But like his older brother, Jesse Lennox avoided speaking of Joan's mother at all costs. If Joan ever asked about her, he'd respond by saying, "That was a long time ago, Joan. I now have about as little memory of her as you do," or "You don't want to hear me talk about that. I'd go into a long story that will bore you in seconds." It was the one thing Joan didn't like about her father, and his reluctance to ever bring her up was the main reason she was so determined to see her mother on that day.

As they were looking through some of the latest British records, including the hits of Jimmy Young and Vera Lynn, Sharron asked, "So, it's just British artists we're looking for, right?"

"Of course. Mum probably owns every Elvis record that's been released so far. I can just imagine opening up her suitcase at the hotel and finding every record of his inside, with all of them meant to be gifts for me," Joan said, already thinking about what surprises would be in store for her when she and her mother finally reunited.

"Or maybe she'll just give you a sweater and socks like every other mother does," Sharron said.

Joan scoffed. "I doubt it. From the few stories Uncle Mike's told me about her, she doesn't seem like the kind of woman who just gives kids boring clothes as presents. Did I ever tell that some of her relatives have connections with the Rockefellers, and she once attended one of their parties when she was a teenager?"

Sharron frowned, shaking her head. "If anyone in your family was that posh, Joan, I'd think I'd know by now."

They were interrupted when Mr. Robinson came over to them carrying a box. "Excuse me, girls, but are either of you close to some of the other girls who come here?"

"I know quite a few," Sharron answered. Joan, who had a reputation as the school's bad girl, wasn't the sort of person who regularly hung out with large groups of girls. Sharron, on the other hand, had several connections with popular girls thanks to her involvement in the school band and theatre program.

"All right. Do you happen to know a girl named Paula McGuire?" Mr. Robinson asked.

Sharron immediately shook her head. "There's a girl named Paula in our history class, but her last name is Carlson and she doesn't come over here regularly. So, no, I have no idea who she is."

"Well, Paula's a regular customer who comes over on Saturdays with a school friend, just like you two. Her father's undergoing treatment for lung cancer, and she recently requested me to have a record delivered over to him at the hospital where he's been staying for the past couple weeks. His condition keeps getting worse, and according to Paula, all that ever seems to make him happy is hearing the current rock hits with her," Mr. Robinson said.

"I can see why. Rock always seems to make the most miserable upon us happy," Joan said, feeling a little down upon hearing this information about a girl she had yet to meet.

"What I was wondering was if you girls wouldn't mind going over to the hospital and delivering the package. It's only a few streets away, and I'll even pay you both for your trouble. That is, if you have extra time on your hands."

"Why, we have plenty of time on our hands to do a favor for you, Mr. Robinson," Joan said. It would be two hours before she had to meet up with her mother, so it could be done. "I'm sure this Paula girl will be more than pleased to see that you've been thinking of her and her father during such a hard time."

"Thank you very much, Joan," Mr. Robinson said with a smile. "I'm pretty sure you girls will like Paula, by the way. She has nearly every rock song out there memorized, and once showed me that she can play them very well on the guitar as well. She's very pretty, too, with her smile being just as charming as her personality."

Joan wasn't very impressed by the beauty remarks, but to hear that Paula loved rock was just enough to get her interested in meeting her. "I'll keep that in mind if I see her, Mr. Robinson," she said.

"I second that," Sharron said. "But first, here are some records we'd like to buy."

Mr. Robinson took in their purchases, just glad these two girls were eager enough to pitch in.

But twenty-six years later, he understood the significance of what he'd done that day. "Years later, when I got records with those four girls' faces on the covers and heard their voices coming through the radio nearly every day, I always smiled with pleasure upon knowing that I was at least partially responsible for their success," he said. "I may have never become a millionaire for that, but I did get the pleasure of having all four Belles return to my store at different times, with each of them bringing in their little girls to buy music of their own. Of course, they were all into stuff like the Archies, the Osmonds, and Disney soundtracks, and were probably more delighted to see my candy than myself, but their mothers were sure to pay me my dues. Paula gave me a signed Sinatra record, Gina a first edition of _Great Expectations,_ which I once told her was my favorite book, Rhiannon a state-of-the-art fishing rod for my holidays at Scotland, and Joan, bless her soul, gave me a book of the music and lyrics of all the Belles' greatest hits, which was signed by all four members of the group. In it, she'd written, 'To Jim. Our errand went better than you could have ever expected. Love, Joan.' I don't think I could have asked for a greater reward."


	3. Chapter 3

Meanwhile, Paula McGuire and her friend Gina Harris were also missing school that day, although the circumstances for their absence were very different.

Unlike Joan Lennox, who had a reputation as one of the biggest troublemakers at her school, Paula McGuire had always been considered a model student. She was currently in the A class at the Liverpool Institute, getting top marks in nearly all her classes, with English and art being amongst her best subjects, and never having been punished for anything at school. Her biggest offense had probably been getting caught reading _The Catcher in the Rye,_ a forbidden book, in her Biology class, but she'd only gotten a warning from her teacher. Although Paula wasn't amongst the most popular girls in school, all the students held some level of respect for her, permitting her to join them in any activities they took part in and seeking her advice if they had a problem.

But while everything seemed perfect for her at school, things at home were a different story. Her family had always struggled with money, requiring both her mother and father to take on jobs, with her mother working as a midwife and her father taking on any odd jobs that came his way. They always managed to provide the basics for Paula and her younger sister Michelle, and could sometimes save enough for respectable clothing and gifts, but that was usually the best they could do. Further complicating matters was Martin McGuire's fragile health. He'd been prone to illness since childhood, and whenever a case of the flu came up, he was always amongst the first to get sick. This resulted in him sometimes taking long periods off from work, forcing his wife Jeannette to take in more hours to bring in more money.

All had taken a turn for the worst this year, when Martin started experiencing difficulties in breathing and going through bad coughing fits. An emergency visit to the hospital revealed that he had developed lung cancer, brought about because of both a family history of cancer and Martin's own smoking habits since the age of fifteen, despite Jeannette's efforts to get him to quit. At first, he would come in for appointments two times a week for chemotherapy, but his condition had worsened to the point where he had to remain confined to the hospital. Now, he could barely speak anymore, and the doctors told his family that he had between two to five months left to live.

This explained why Paula decided not to go to school that Friday. Instead, she brought in her guitar in a black case, a bookbag with copies of all three _Lord of the Rings_ books, and a box of chocolates, then went over to the Liverpool Hospital along with Gina Harris for company.

The two girls arrived at around nine thirty, and had to stay in the waiting room for ten minutes while a doctor examined Martin to see if he was in a shape to see visitors. Paula spend this time rereading bits from _The Fellowship of the Ring,_ while Gina simply fidgeted with a loose string from her jacket with a blank expression on her face as she listened to the music coming from the radio of one of the hospital's secretaries. It was one of the orchestra symphonies which were always being played on BBC radio; not bad in of itself, but given the popularity of rock and roll among teenagers and the strong resistance to it that came from adults, hearing people play such music seemed reactionary. And for Gina Harris, who simply sighed with boredom once she heard the piece well enough, these was her exact thoughts on it.

"Gina, don't just sit around looking like that. Did you not bring something to pass the time away with?" Paula asked.

"What's the point of that if they usually call us in sooner than we expect?" Gina asked.

"You never know for sure. But either way, why do you always have to do this?"

"Do what?" Gina asked, although she perfectly understood what Paula meant.

"This habit you have of sitting around, spacing out, and not giving a damn about what goes on around you. It's already gotten you into a lot of trouble at school, and if you keep up with it, it will only make things worse for you," Paula said.

"Keep up with that bloody teacher act of yours, and you'll see just how much trouble I can be," Gina said, only half serious, but still wishing Paula would just back off. She didn't share Paula's attitude towards school, and was almost as careless about it as Joan, although her own rebellion was more of a quiet and solitary affair, while Joan always had to be vocal about what displeased her and have partners in crime by her side. Paula, being a year older than Gina, tried to get her to quit being so indifferent towards school, but Gina never listened to her.

What bonded these two girls, however, was their shared love of music, especially rock. Gina admired Paula's ability to memorize songs at full length and how disciplined she was in her practicing habits, always resulting in polished performances. Paula, meanwhile, loved Gina's songwriting, since she always came up with insightful lyrics that made her question why she couldn't put that much effort into an essay, as well as the change in attitude it provoked in her. When picking up a guitar, Gina showed passion for something, and threw in as much effort as possible to do well, even if her practicing habits were a bit off.

The girls were interrupted from going on when a nurse opened the door and said, "Paula McGuire? Your father's ready to see you now."

"Okay," Paula said, and she and Gina got up and walked into the quiet room where Martin McGuire was being confined to. The man who lay in the bed, being awfully thin and with the little hair he had left being grey and greasy, looked extremely different from the bulky, hard- working yet cheerful man who played swing songs on the piano and kept his daughters entertained with wild stories about his days as part of a jazz band back in the thirties. But despite how sickly he looked, Paula knew that his old spirit was still there, and it seemed to awaken the most when she brought in her guitar to show how she'd inherited much of the McGuire musical talent.

Paula walked up to her father's bed, pressed her hand into his own and said with a smile, "Hi, Dad. Nice to see you again after a week."

"Nice seeing you too, sweetheart," Martin whispered back in a raspy voice.

"You remember my friend Gina? We've been practicing music together for a while now. She's not as experienced as I am, but she's learning very quickly and becoming quite good at both playing the guitar and songwriting."

"I think I met her once," Martin said. Then, turning to Gina, he said, "Thank you for joining Paula, Gina."

Gina had turned pale upon seeing how sickly Paula's father looked. As someone who had healthy, almost picturesque parents and siblings, seeing her friend's father's poor condition came as a shock to her. And many years later, she would say this was the moment when the strong spirituality she would develop as an adult started budding. "Although I didn't know it at the time, I was slowly becoming more compassionate, understanding that not everything that brings happiness starts out by being pleasant to the eyes, if you know what I mean," she said in the series of interviews done in 1982.

But now, all the timid teenager could say was, "It's a pleasure to see you again, Mr. McGuire."

Martin smiled, "The more, the merrier," he said. "Now, when will the music start?"

"In a minute. Just let us get ready," Paula said. She then picked up her guitar case and started taking the guitar out, preparing to play a song she had written just a few days ago. Gina sat in the wooden chair beside her, since she had neither brought along an instrument nor memorized Paula's new song.

But just when she was about to start playing, a knock from the door. "Mr. McGuire?" called out the same nurse as before. "We have two other girls here saying that they're here to run an errand for you."

This had both Paula and Gina startled. Paula had spoken to Mr. Robinson several days ago, requesting for several records she'd ordered to be delivered to her father on this day. And as far as she knew, he didn't have any girls working for him, only a homely teenaged boy whom all the girls avoided because of rumors that he came from a family that lived amongst rubbish.

"Let them in," Martin said.

And so, in walked Joan Lennox and Sharron Stevens, looking so lively in comparison to the more serious state Paula and Gina were in.

"My first impression of Joan and Sharron was that they looked as if they were starting in on a school holiday," Paula later said as part of the same interview series. "They may have been in a hospital, but it seemed like it was an adventure to them, or part of some rebellious act. It didn't help that they were both wearing light red socks along with their school uniforms, a violation to most school dress codes requiring nothing but black, grey, or navy blue. Being the teenager that I was, it both shocked and impressed me."

Joan was similarly startled upon seeing Paula. Mr. Robinson had not been lying when he said she was pretty; she had raven black hair that was pulled up in a ponytail, dark eyes and eyelashes that were as long as a movie star's, a tall stature along with curvy legs and arms, and not a trace of a blemish on her face. Gina was a little pretty herself, with short, light brown hair and a slender body. She was quite short, looking more like she was still in primary school as opposed to being thirteen, but there was no denying her budding looks.

In contrast, Joan had wavy brown hair that she felt she could never get to look good no matter how often she combed and brushed it. And on that day, she happened to be wearing her dreaded spectacles, which she avoided wearing whenever she could because of their big lenses and dull grey frames. Sharron wasn't much of a looker herself, looking to Joan like the splitting image of Anne of Green Gables with her red hair that her mother always made her wear in braids and freckles all over her face.

But of course, Joan's interest in Paula could only be piqued by the guitar she held. She'd seen her preparing to play when she and Sharron had entered, and in a way, she was slightly annoyed that she'd had to stop to give her one of those weird stares people always gave strangers when they found them interesting for whatever reason.

And so, it was Joan who was the first to speak up amongst the group of girls: "Well, don't just stand there. Give us some of that talent you seem so keen on hiding."

Paula looked up at Joan with a sneaky smile. "What makes you convinced that I have talent? For all you know, I might just be a beginner who can't stand the feel of the strings against my fingers and can only play "Twinkle Little Star" as a result."

"Actually, that sounds a lot more like my friend Sharron here. She can sing really well, without even looking through music notes, in fact. But give her a guitar and she plays so badly that she can't even get "Silent Night" right."

"Got to admit that's true," Sharron said with a grin.

Martin seemed amused by the two girls' exchange. "Do you two know each other by chance?" he asked.

Joan could not understand his raspy voice, and so when he spoke up, she turned to Paula and asked, "What's he saying?"

"He's asking if we know each other," Paula clarified. Then, turning to her father, she said, "No, Dad. We don't."

"Because it seems like you might get on easily," he told her.

"I don't know. She seems too troublesome to me," Paula responded.

"Now, Paula. I thought your mother and I taught you better than to rely on your first impressions of people. From what I'm seeing, it looks like she could become a good friend of yours," her father said.

Paula shrugged. At the moment, making new friends wasn't high on her list of priorities. Being so close to losing her father, she couldn't think too much of adding in new people into her life, as it felt too much as if she were trying to replace his influence. Instead, she preferred to grow closer to the people who were already part of her life, like her mother, Michelle, or Gina, who until recently had been someone she only got together with on the bus to school.

But since she figured she wouldn't be seeing these two girls again anytime soon, she assumed it couldn't do much harm to include them into what was supposed to be a private moment with her father and friend.

And so, she turned to Joan and Sharron and said, "If you two want to, you can stick around for one song. One song, and that's it. Is that good enough?"

"Sure. No need to be so uptight about it though. Even your dad seems to enjoy our company," Joan said.

"I'm not being uptight, I'm just trying to make a point," Paula said. She noticed this got both Gina and Sharron giggling, and decided it was best to get on with the music before everything turned into a big joke. So, she picked up her guitar, and began to slowly strum the notes of a song she'd recently been trying to put together:

 _When I look into my window in troubled times,_

 _a golden light shines down on me,_

 _and I hear the wind whisper in my ear,_

" _Move along, child. Move along."_

 _My tears make it hard to see the beauty in front of me_

 _But my memories keep that wonderful moment alive_

 _And now whenever hard times keep me down_

 _I keep my head high and think back with a smile_

 _On that time Mother Nature reminded me to move along_

 _Move along, child. Move along._

Although her father had taught Paula much about using instruments, it was her mother who taught her songwriting. Having temporarily worked as a singer in a bar at the time she met Martin, Jeanette McGuire had written her own music on four different occasions, all of which had resulted in much praise from both her audiences and her employer, who considered recommending her to an agent in London. However, because of her commitment to midwifery and her later engagement to Martin, Jeanette had rejected his offer. Unlike her daughter, she couldn't imagine living a life of fame. She would later say that if she'd experienced all the things Paula had as a famous singer, she might have gone insane.

But just like her husband, Jeanette had taught both Paula and Michelle all she knew about music, including how to compose their own music. Michelle struggled with this, but Paula had picked up on it quickly. At the time, Jeannette had been working on writing several songs herself, intending to have Paula perform some of them to her husband during their hospital visits. However, she didn't have the energy to perform them herself. Her own visits consisted of giving words of comfort to Martin and praying the rosary for his health. As a result, she encouraged her oldest daughter to bring as much energy into their meetings as possible. "You have this strength in you that seems to be getting smaller within me," Jeanette had told her. "Give your father as much of it as you can. If we're to lose him this early, I know he'll want to go with a smile on his face."

Joan had been dumbstruck by the song. Although she thought the lyrics were a little cliché, she couldn't help loving the way she integrated them into the music, keeping her voice gentle and sweet throughout the piece, and always strumming the right notes into her guitar. With that much talent, Paula McGuire could make even the silliest of love songs seem like masterpieces.

"What do you think? Is it as bad as you thought it would be, or worse?" Paula asked her.

"I'm sure she loves it as much as I do, Paula," Martin said.

"Your dad's got it right, Paula. You seem like a promising musician, and if you could move past the subject of breakups, perhaps you could get somewhere with your talent," Joan commented.

"That's not supposed to be a love song. It's supposed to be about overcoming grief," Paula said.

"Either way, it's not too bad," Joan said. "In fact, you should try giving Sharron lessons someday, if not form your own band."

Sharron then nudged Joan's shoulder and reminded her of the shortage of time. Joan nodded, and turning to Paula again, she said, "We have to get going now. I'm expected back quite soon. And before I can forget, here are your records. Hope you and your dad enjoy them. " She then handed the records over to Paula.

"T hanks a lot. But would you mind telling me who you are before leaving?" Paula asked.

"Sure. The name's Joan Lennox, and this is my friend Sharron Stevens. What about your own friend over there?"

"That's Gina Harris. She's a little uneasy with people she's meeting for the first time," Paula said, as Gina turned around and gave them a quick wave with an awkward smile on her face.

"Nice meeting you all, including you, Mr. McGuire. Hope you can get better someway," Joan said.

"Have a good day, Joan. We enjoyed your company a great deal," Martin said.

Paula gave Joan a quick handshake, thinking this would be the last time she'd see her. "So long, Joan. Hope you don't get into too much trouble for skipping school."

"Who said anything about skipping? I had important work to get done today. Either way, hope all goes well for you too. And don't forget what I said about your talent."

"I won't," Paula said. And as Gina and Sharron gave their own farewells, she assumed this would be her biggest takeaway from meeting Joan, and she would later find out that she wasn't wrong in thinking so.


	4. Chapter 4

Of the three remaining Belles, Rhiannon Steel was probably the one who helped Joan's family cope with the tragedy the most. Motivated by a sense of obligation that dated back to the Belles' breakup, during which she accompanied Joan and Yuki during some of their trips and even became the drummer for the band they briefly formed, she was the first to show up at Joan's Dakota apartment to pay her condolences to Yuki personally.

Upon getting there, she'd been a little surprised at how some unruly some things were. Taking off her shoes after walking in, since Yuki liked following this Japanese custom, she found herself placing her sneakers around a box of half-eaten chocolates. Knowing Yuki's usual disdain for sweets, this seemed like the first sign that something wasn't right. And when entering the living room, she found Yuki dressed in nothing but a blue bathrobe while sprawled around the couch, and Shannon sitting on the floor in her pink pajamas while watching cartoons.

Yuki gasped when she saw Rhiannon. "Why, Rhiannon! You seem to have appeared out of nowhere. How did you get in?"

"Daddy, don't you remember that Mom gave her a key to the house this summer?" Shannon reminded.

"Oh, of course, sweetheart. You seem to remember these things better than I do," Yuki said.

"Don't worry too much about that, Yuki. What I'm more concerned about is what's up with all the carelessness around here. Wouldn't a control freak like yourself be keeping things more in line?" Rhiannon said, picking up the box of chocolates to prove her point.

"And I'm sorry for your loss as well, Rhiannon," Yuki said sarcastically. "What happened to the nice, simple drummer who was always by our side when all the other in-laws were constantly shunning Joan? If I didn't know better, I'd say that you're acting a lot like Paula now."

However, as this unusual exchange was going on between them, they were both smiling.

"Don't ever call me simple again," Rhiannon said before she started giggling. "Just look at us. You, sitting around half-dressed in the couch with rubbish thrown around the place like a lazy bum, and me, walking in on you two as if I were your cleaning lady instead of your wife's old band mate. I'm sure Joan would be getting a good laugh out of this if she were here."

"Yes," Yuki said. "Joan always said it was healthier to laugh in the face of tragedy instead of crying."

Rhiannon nodded. Although it had only been close to a day since Joan's death, she found it hard to remember the last time she'd laughed. All she'd wanted since then was to express her sorrow with someone who'd known and loved Joan just as much as she did, as opposed to sharing her feelings with frantic reporters who only wanted to make a good story out of her personal tragedy, or even her three children, who saw Joan as a good friend of their mother's but nothing deeper than that. And if that person had to be Yuki, then so be it. He may have been a bit crazy back then, but he'd been by Joan's side when that crazed woman from Alaska had shot her to death, and so Rhiannon felt that he deserved her sympathy as much as any other widower would.

And so, she struck around to help Yuki and Shannon around the house while staying at a hotel that was only a few blocks away. And later, when Jessica Warren showed up in New York City and needed a place to stay, she'd payed for her hotel room and offered her support as well.

Several days later, Rhiannon felt herself crying for the first time since her friend's death just as they were lowering Joan's coffin onto the ground. Jessica, whom Rhiannon had kept by her side during the service, buried her head in Rhiannon's coat, quietly sobbing and only looking up once as the remains of her mother were put away for good beside her own deceased mother. Rhiannon embraced her as her own tears started falling, and she was soon sobbing harder than Jessica was. This was the moment it struck her that Joan was gone for good. No amount of wishing or begging would bring her back; the world would half to accept that yet another beloved star had faded out of their lives.

Yet, as quickly as she'd let her sorrow out, she was somehow better able to recover than the others. As she wiped away the last of her tears, Rhiannon noticed Paula and Laurie still embracing each other as they both cried. Gina hugged Daniella while sobbing hysterically, all her hours of meditation not having been enough to fully rid of her sadness. And probably most painful to watch was Shannon clinging to her father, shaking as she sobbed and tried to hide her sad face from the dozens of people who appeared to be watching her so closely. Yuki uttered comforting words to her while stroking her hair and kissing her, but sounded more as if he was trying to convince himself of them instead of his daughter.

When the burial was done, Rhiannon handed Jessica a Kleenex and asked, "Are you going to be okay, Jessica? Want me to take you back to the hotel now, or did you have other plans?"

Jessica dabbed at her brown eyes, sniffing quietly for a while before looking up at Rhiannon and saying, "Actually, Rhiannon, I'm thinking of staying over with Yuki and Shannon for a while."

"For a while? Do you mean for the night, or longer?" Rhiannon asked.

"However long Yuki lets me, I guess," Jessica said.

"Well, do as you wish," Rhiannon said. "Given what you're going through, some time with your family might be the best medicine."

Jessica gave a small smile. "May as well start now, don't you think?"

Rhiannon didn't realize what she meant at first, until she saw her walking over to Yuki and Shannon. Yuki was talking with Gina, who still looked quite vulnerable from seeing their friend's burial. Given how they'd both given speeches during the event, with Yuki talking about his marriage to Joan and how their love for each other had inspired their peace advocacy, and Gina sharing funny stories about their time as the Belles, Rhiannon had to bet they were offering feedback to each other. Back in the day, Yuki had taken an interest in Gina's songwriting, getting into the habit of giving her a little more advise than she desired on everything from melodies to song themes. It had annoyed Gina then, but she now admitted that it had helped on certain occasions, especially when composing her first solo album.

Coming up to Shannon, Jessica nudged her shoulder gently and said, "Hi, Shannon. Everything going okay?"

Shannon threw her arms around her sister, and the two were soon hugging each other. She whispered something Rhiannon couldn't hear into Jessica's ear, to which Jessica nodded slowly before whispering back to her. Then, thumbing through Shannon's scarf, she chuckled and said, "I bet only a few of our American guests know what you're wearing, kid. To them, it's probably just an ordinary old scarf. You're already starting to learn about our family's little inside jokes, are you?"

"What are inside jokes?" Shannon asked.

"They're jokes that only certain people can understand," Jessica explained.

"Oh, I see," Shannon said with a smile. "I thought not many people would know what I was wearing because there's only one other kid in my class that watches _Doctor Who_."

"That's pretty clever of you," Jessica said. "And by the way, have you noticed what I'm wearing?"

This got both Rhiannon and Shannon's attention as they closely examined what Jessica wore. And upon looking down at her long white skirt, they noticed immediately.

"You're wearing the funny red socks Mom used to get in trouble for wearing to school!" Shannon said.

"Got that right, kid," Jessica said.

Rhiannon looked surprised. "Your mum told you that story already?"

"Yeah. She liked telling me everything about herself," Shannon said.

Finishing whatever it was they were discussing, Gina and Yuki now turned their attention towards the three of them.

"Oh, how stupid I've been!" Gina said, clasping her arm around Rhiannon's back. "You've been here longer than any of us, Rhiannon, and yet I haven't taken the time to talk to you in person since Joan died."

"It's not your fault, Gina. Rhiannon's been keeping herself busy ever since she got here," Yuki said, looking at Rhiannon with an odd sense of admiration. "She always seems to be the one we can count on to handle family emergencies. We could all take a couple lessons from her, right, Jessica?"

Jessica blushed, and Rhiannon wondered if this was his way of acknowledging Christian's absence from Joan's funeral. But, keeping her cool, Jessica said, "Yes, Yuki. I'm really glad Rhiannon was here to help me when I needed her."

Yuki then took Jessica into his arms, giving her a small hug. As glad as they were to see Yuki showing some affection towards Jessica, it had both Rhiannon and Gina thinking it seemed a little awkward. While he'd kissed Shannon just a while ago while hugging her, he looked as if he was trying to be careful with Jessica, refusing to cross some boundary that was all too common with some stepchildren. It was rarely seen with Harold and Paula, but then again, the circumstances behind his parent's divorce (his mother had been an heiress who'd preferred parties and much wealthier men over raising the son she'd had with Laurie) made it easier for him to accept Paula into his life. Things between Joan and Christian had been much more complicated, and having only been five when they'd divorced, the separation had hurt Jessica in ways that couldn't be repaired no matter how hard either Joan or Yuki had tried.

After remaining silent for a while, Jessica told Yuki, "I've decided that I want to go home with you and Shannon."

"That's okay. Shannon has been wanting to see you ever since it all happened, so I think having you around for the night will do her a lot of good," Yuki said.

"Actually, if you're willing to let me, I want to stay a little longer. Perhaps for a week or two, or even into the Christmas holidays," Jessica said.

Yuki looked unsure about this. "But don't you have school exams and sports games to take care of? I know you left just as winter holidays were about to start, so you're probably missing out on a lot already. Also, if you're worried about how I'll handle things at home, you know I already have Rhiannon close by to help. We really wouldn't need you for that long."

"I already gave a ring to my headmistress before I left England, Yuki. She knows about everything that happened, and said that I could take as much time off to sort things out in New York as I wanted to. I would be allowed to take my exams in January if I so choose, and basketball season ended a week ago, so I don't have to worry about that either," Jessica said.

"Please let her stay, Yuki," Rhiannon said. "I have several music sessions in London next week that I can't miss, so I can't help you out that much longer. Also, Jessica's your stepdaughter. She's been affected by Joan's death just as much as you and Shannon have been, and as family, you should all be sticking together. If you saw just how awful she's been feeling at the hotel when I've gone to see her, you'd understand how much she needs you."

"She's right, Yuki. It would be awful to let her go so early when we don't even know what's going on with Christian," Gina said.

In the three days that Rhiannon had been going over to see Jessica, it had been nearly impossible for her to say anything besides "I'm fine", or "I just want to be left alone". Much of her time was spend seated beside the hotel room's telephone, waiting to receive a phone call from her father that never came in. She rarely got any sleep either, preferring to watch late night shows she despised while in bed than to close her eyes and see what happened to her mother flashing before her eyes in a nightmare.

To Rhiannon's relief, Yuki looked sympathetic enough. Turning to Shannon, he asked, "What do you say, sweetheart? Do you want Jessica to spend a week with us?"

"Yes!" Shannon called out happily, not suspecting her father's doubts.

"Well, I guess that settles the matter," Yuki said with a smile. "Stay as long as you want with us, Jessica."

"Thanks a lot," Jessica said. But Rhiannon noticed a look of doubt remained on the girl's face, as if she wasn't sure how well this could go.

…

When Jessica Warren had been only a year old, she'd appeared in a series of photos that was published in the 1964 Christmas edition of _Vogue_ showcasing the family lives of all four Belle members. Half of Joan's photos were dedicated to showing off her baby girl, with one of them showing her wearing a satin red dress and matching ribbon while seated around a life-sized teddy bear. Several others were taken of her with at least one of her parents present (and always in different outfits), but the only one which showed all three of them together was one where Christian and Joan were seated on a Harley Davidson motorcycle, with Joan carrying Jessica around in a sack that was fastened to her back. In it, they were all smiling, looking as if they always had moments as carefree as shown in that photo.

But Jessica had very few early memories of a glamorous life or happy parents. Most of what she remembered was her father sitting alone in the evenings in their large sitting room, staring at the television with a tired look in his face. She would sometimes see news coverage of the Belles, during which she would look up happily at her dad and say, "There's Mummy!". He would then nod and say, "Yes, there she is, all right." On one really bad day, he'd added in "How many other mothers do you think actually appear on the telly instead of just watching the telly with their kids?" And Jessica had been left dumbstruck, not sure what her father meant.

And on those days when her mother was with them, there was always this sense of quietness that Jessica had grown accustomed to over the years. On those days, her mother and father would sit with her during tea time, sipping from their glasses while having short conversations about the weather or their plans for the week. It was often boring, but if things weren't quiet, then her parents would be yelling over something, and she would be sent to her room to play with her toys until things had calmed down a little.

Around the time of the divorce when she was five, she remembered feeling afraid all the time. People in suits would enter their house and ask her father all sorts of strange questions. Sometimes, they even asked Jessica things, including, "Has your mother been treating you well?" or "Do you feel safe when you're at home?" Her time spend alone in her room increased, until the day her father told her that her mother would be leaving home and not returning anymore.

"Why?" she'd asked, "Is she going on another long trip with the Belles?"

"No," her father answered sadly. "She's found someone else that makes her happy now, so she'll be living with him for now on."

Years later, she'd find out the full extend of why they broke up. In addition to being angry over how her mother was rarely around the family, her father had been suspecting that she'd been cheating on him during her tours, and so when Jessica had been two, he'd started an affair of his own with one of his old friends from art school, the start of two affairs he'd had while still married. Her mother felt that Christian didn't want to give her any support, and she would openly complain to the other Belles about how awful things were at home, sometimes preferring to stay in hotels with their manager, Brenda Stein, rather than staying with her husband, even if it was for Jessica's sake. When Joan learned about Christian's affairs, that was the last straw for her, and after a series of fights, she decided to leave him for Yuki Ogawa, whom she'd understood her more as an artist than Christian ever would.

Jessica had only met Yuki on two occasions when she was little. During the first time, she wasn't sure what to think of him. Her mother told her that he was an artist, which had impressed her at first, but her excitement over it had worn off when she discovered how quiet and grim Yuki was around her, often appearing just as nervous as she was around him. Yet her mother was always in a good mood when he was around, and she couldn't understand why that was. On the second occasion, the realization of what was going on with her parents was clearer to her, and she'd asked him, "Why are you leaving with my mummy?"

Yuki had been quiet for a moment. Then he'd said, "I want to give her a better life. Your mother had been unhappy for a long time, and I want to change that for her. Perhaps later, when things are better for her, you could come along with us. I have a son that's around your age, and your mother wants more children soon, so I hope we could all come together as a family soon. But that will have to wait."

And the wait turned out being longer than Jessica had hoped for. By the time she started seeing her mother again, she was thirteen, living in Nottingham with her father, who now taught art classes at the sixth form level. She was an accomplished school athlete, having led multiple championships for her school, while also showing an interest in music. She felt out of place in her mother's new home in New York City, especially now that it seemed like she was finally forming that perfect little family that Yuki had longed to have all those years ago. More love and attention was given to her half- sister Shannon than Jessica could ever recall getting herself as a child, and as much as she loved her sister, she couldn't help but feel as if she was an intruder whenever she came over, a bitter reminder of the past that ought to stay away if the family was to remain well.

But despite all her mother had done, the happy family she'd formed was now left shattered once again. Jessica was seventeen now, no longer willing to stay hidden in her room when something went wrong. Her father had taken off almost as soon as he heard the news, giving her money to pay for a flight to New York while telling her, "You're already better at handling difficult situations than I ever could, Jessica. Go out there now, and if anything starts going wrong, feel free to come back. I'll try to get back home as soon as I can."

"But why leave at all, Dad? Doesn't it seem like you're letting Mum down by doing this?" Jessica asked, her eyes still full of tears after forcing herself to watch the full news broadcast detailing her mother's murder.

"I let her down a long time ago already, Jess. And now, everyone will be wanting to get something out of me, and no matter what I say or do, they'll manipulate it in some way. They villainized me almost as much as they did Yuki back in the day, and no matter how many books I write about your mother or how many interviews I give, it won't make a difference. So, if I'm not around during this media circus, maybe it's all for the better," her father said.

He then kissed her in the forehead and headed over outside to his 1973 Impala, driving off before any reporters or friends would come over to see him.

A couple days later, Jessica was putting on sunglasses as she stepped into Yuki's Rolls Royce. Yuki had advised her to do so before leaving, warning her that, "They'll soon be bombarding you with questions, and it's always as we're preparing to leave. It doesn't help that you already look a lot like your mother."

This was true. Jessica now had long curly brown hair that looked an awful lot like her mother's when she was her age. She may have been tall and muscular, with no spectacles outlining her brown eyes, but her face still had that soft yet plain look that many associated with Joan Lennox. And there was no doubt they'd notice the red stockings too, but unlike Shannon, they may not see it so much as endearing than as a desperate attempt to try making herself be a little too much like her famous mother.

But to everyone's relief, there were no reporters waiting beside the Rolls Royce. Instead, the dozens of journalists waiting outside the church went after Paula and Laurie as they were walking around with their kids. Laurie was the one who answered most questions, yet Paula's silence was already being looked upon with suspicion after her last questionable statement, even as they saw her gently guiding along Martin and Jenna in place of speaking with them.

Once they were inside the car, Jessica asked, "Why do you think they didn't come after us?"

"Probably out of respect," Yuki said. "Nothing looks more indecent than going after a dead woman's widower and children. Perhaps they learned something after all those years of bothering your mother for no good reason."

Jessica remained silent after he said this. She once saw Yuki's constant disdain of reporters as a way of making excuses for his own questionable behaviors, but after seeing what just happened with the McGuire's, she figured that at least now he had a good reason for being suspicious. And with him giving her advice on how to avoid them, perhaps that meant they could continue acting civilly around each other.

They were all mostly quiet during the ride home. That was, until Shannon started tapping Jessica in the shoulder.

"What is it, kid?" Jessica asked, almost expecting her to talk about still feeling sad after the funeral.

But instead, she asked, "Do you have any food with you, Jessica? I'm hungry."

Jessica laughed. Why was she always expecting every word that came out of people's mouths to be so dramatic? "Didn't you have any lunch? Don't tell me your dad's making you fast or something crazy like that."

"Neither of us was in much of a mood to eat as we were preparing to go," Yuki explained. "I tried getting Shannon to eat something, but she kept telling me she wasn't hungry."

"Well, Shannon, you're lucky that I got a bag of biscuits with me. That is, if that's all right with you, Yuki," Jessica said.

"Please say yes, Daddy," Shannon begged, already reaching into Jessica's purse for the bag.

"Let her eat what she wants. Some cookies once in a while never hurt anyone. Not anymore than what we'll be having for dinner."

"And what will that be? More takeout Chinese food?" Jessica asked, remembering what Rhiannon told her about his newly acquired eating habits.

Yuki laughed. "Oh, no. We've had enough of that for now. I was thinking instead of ordering from Pizza Hut. Joan would sometimes take Shannon there when I wasn't around, but I've only ever eaten there once, believe it or not. Thought now would be the best time to have it again."

"You willingly eating fast food. I never thought I'd see the day," Jessica said.

"Neither did I," Yuki said.

 _So far, so good,_ Jessica thought. In the past, she'd be lucky if Yuki could utter a word to her when her mother wasn't around. Now, he was at least trying to include her in conversations. Even if it was just out of politeness, it was better than nothing at all.

…

Four hours later, Jessica was lying in a mattress in Shannon's room, feeling stuffed and exhausted. Shannon was seated in her bed, working on a drawing beside her dozens of stuffed animals. Yuki had gone into his studio for the night, working on a mural that he wouldn't show to anyone for the time being. "Focusing on my work has been more helpful for me than sleeping," he'd told Jessica as he'd wished the girls a good night.

Dinner had gone well, with the three of them eating a cheese pizza that had been delivered over to the apartment along with Coca Cola and chocolate ice cream for dessert, a big change from the low- fat Japanese meals Jessica was used to having during her past visits. She shared stories from her sports games, while Yuki talked about his latest art projects and how he was completing the art portfolio of her mother's work that she'd started putting together after Shannon was born. Everyone remained friendly towards each other, and Jessica managed not to remain so anxious.

Now, alone with Shannon, she asked, "So, how would like to spend our days together, kid?"

"You remember how during our last visit, you said you'd start teaching me the guitar?" Shannon asked.

"Yeah. I also said it can be quite hard because of all the work you put into your fingers. I see you had your nails cut a while ago, so it might be hard to start with lessons at this point," Jessica said.

Shannon sighed. "Could I at least watch you practice?"

"Sure," Jessica agreed.

"Good. Daddy said he will start showing me how to play the piano and sing soon, because he thinks I'm already showing talent."

This had Jessica laughing. Given Yuki's tendency to sound like a dying animal when he sang (although no one could ever convince her mother of this), she knew he wasn't the right person to be showing anyone how to sing, especially not his daughter. "Are you sure you want singing lessons from your dad?" she asked.

"Why not? I think he sounds okay," Shannon said.

 _We might have a problem here,_ Jessica thought. But to Shannon, she said, "It's just that I think art is more of his thing."

"He's already teaching me to draw. I can already draw cats and birds, and he says that with a little more practice, I could learn to draw people soon."

"Sounds like you already know a great deal," Jessica said. "Mum tried teaching me to draw a while back, but I wasn't very good at it. I'm much better at photography though, so that's something else I could show you someday."

Shannon was quiet for a while. Then she asked, "Would you mind if I leave the light on while we sleep?"

"Sure, but why? Do you get scared of the dark?" Jessica said.

"Not always. But after I found out that Mom was shot, I get scared whenever my room is dark," Shannon admitted. "I keep thinking that if everything is dark, someone will come into the house when I'm not looking and try killing me too."

This confession shocked Jessica. The poor girl was much more scared about what happened than she was letting on. And Jessica couldn't blame her; watching the nearly unlimited news footage about how her mother's killer had been a paranoid schizophrenic who'd developed an obsession with exposing Joan Lennox as a hypocrite, then shooting her five times after getting an autograph from her earlier in the day (she was reported to have waited for nearly four hours outside of the apartments) always left her feeling terrified and sickened afterwards.

"Look, Shannon. Nobody's going to try hurting you. That woman's in jail now, and is probably going to stay there for the rest of her life. Despite what they show in movies, there aren't dozens of people running wild killing people at any moment after things like this happen," she said, patting her sister in the shoulder.

"Would you try protecting me if they did, though?" Shannon asked.

"Of course. Just one swing of my baseball bat, and I could put down any potential serial killer in a second," Jessica said.

This had Shannon giggling. "I bet you can. You're so strong that you could beat anyone in a fight."

"Yeah. I just hope I never have to do it."

And with that said, Jessica now turned off all the lights except for Shannon's desk lamp. As she'd been dressing up in the bathroom, she'd taken a sleeping pill so that she wouldn't remain wide awake through the night, or have nightmares when she did sleep. She'd been taking them every night since that awful first night where she kept seeing her mother being shot every time she managed to sleep, which frightened her more than the old stories of the Belles downing sleeping pills during busy nights on tour and nearly developing addictions at this point. If they were taken for a good purpose, she didn't see how they could become problematic.

As she wrapped the pink covers around her sister, she said, "And Shannon?"

"Yes?"

"If anything else bothers you, don't be afraid to tell me. There's nothing wrong with letting other people know when you're upset or scared."

"Okay. I will. Good night, Jessica," Shannon said.

"Good night to you too, Shannon," Jessica said. And she hoped things would always stay this way between the two of them.


	5. Chapter 5

A week and three days later, Jessica got a call from Rhiannon Steel asking how things were going.

"Oh, I've been adjusting," Jessica told her. "Can't say things have been easy all the time, but we're getting along quite well, if that's what you're worried about."

"That was in the back of my mind, but to be honest, I wasn't too worried about that," Rhiannon said. "As complicated as Yuki is, he's not the type of person to be outright mean to someone during difficult times. Even when the Belles broke up and everyone thought he was responsible for it, he'd spend much of those last days giving your mum and me advice on our next project along with tea and biscuits he'd made himself. Not really the evil dragon boy by any means, even if Paula thought differently back then."

"Well, he's not treating me badly, but how he's acting still bothers me," Jessica said. "He'll spend about half the day alone in his studio, and the rest of time, he likes sitting around in his old armchair, where he'll talk to us for a while but otherwise do nothing at all. He lets Shannon or me come into the studio whenever we wish to, but otherwise, he keeps his distance from everyone. No visitors are allowed unless they call us first, and if Shannon and I go out, we must give him the full details about where we'll go and when we'll come back, or else we can't leave the apartment at all."

Rhiannon sighed. "You can't expect him to be easy going after what he's been through. I rarely leave home these days myself if I don't have work to do. It upsets Jane, Lou, and Zoe sometimes, but they seem to understand why I do it. If you give it some time, perhaps he'll start acting more normally soon."

Jessica hoped she was right. As nice as it was to be looking after Shannon, she was tired of being the only one who cleaned up around the place or made any attempt at cooking despite being terrible at it. And the awful silences when there was little to do were probably the worst moments. No amount of silly shows she and Shannon watched (Jessica only really liked the British shows on PBS and MASH, after all), nor all those awful, mellow country and soft rock songs played on the radio recently (the good rock hits from the earlier part of the year seemed to have vanished for good) could make up for the lively conversations Jessica usually had with her mum when she visited in the past.

Then, of course, there were the calls they got from friends and relatives, including her great uncle Mike and aunt Gretchen, who were close to both Jessica and Shannon, but had to show up in New York a day after the funeral because of how they were handling some of her mother's finances in England, and even her father, who was now back home and permitting Jessica to stay on until New Year's at the latest (although he still wouldn't reveal where he'd been in the past week). They'd also heard from Laurie and Daniella, but not Paula and Gina themselves for some reason, which upset Yuki because he took it to mean they were probably carrying on with the Belles' old feud.

Throughout the rest of the conversation, Rhiannon told Jessica that she'd been increasing the time spend with her three kids and was even looking into starting a relationship with Malcom Owens, a well-known actor through the BBC. She'd taken to drinking less these past few days after years of depending on it so much when she'd get depressed, and had now found it a little easier to write songs because of it, which would perhaps put an end to the claims that she was the least talent Belle. Jessica wished her luck on all that, but told her little else about what went on at home, figuring she didn't want to bother Rhiannon when she was doing her best to adjust to these hard times.

When the call was done, Jessica returned to the living room, where Shannon was now sitting in Yuki's lap while he was watching the news.

"How's Rhiannon doing?" Yuki asked her.

"She's adjusting. She told me she doesn't like leaving home much anymore, but when she's focused on her work, it helps her feel better."

"I don't blame her. I sometimes wonder when I'll be able to set foot out of the apartment without panicking so much. Just going through the main entrance remains me of how I saw your mom sprawled on the floor and bleeding through her arm and chest on that exact spot just a week ago."

Shannon turned pale as she heard her father speak. Noticing this, Yuki held his daughter's hand and said, "Am I scaring you, sweetheart?"

"Say whatever you want to, Daddy. I'm okay with it," Shannon said.

"Are you sure?"

Shannon looked weakly at both Yuki and Jessica. "I don't know," she whispered.

Yuki took the girl into his arms. "It's okay to feel that way, Shannon," he said in a gentle voice. "We've all been sad about what happened to your mom. Jessica's been sad, Rhiannon, Gina, and Paula have been sad, and so am I. You don't have to feel like you're alone in this. Do you understand?"

Shannon nodded, and Jessica felt touched by what she saw. There were times in the past when she'd wondered whether Yuki loved Shannon as much as her mum did, and all it would take was seeing him greeting her so eagerly when he got back home or taking on the roles her mother usually took on with no complaint, like dressing and changing her or putting her to bed, to make her realize he really did care. Having lost touch with Kyo, his son from his first marriage, when the boy was only three years old (according to rumors, Yuki's ex-wife had joined a doomsday cult that forced Kyo to believe that his father was evil from a young age), he wanted to be as close to Shannon as possible to make up for the relationship he could never have with his son. Her mother had confided in her that losing Shannon was Yuki's biggest fear, and given what had just happened, Jessica guessed that this fear might now be worse than ever before.

Noticing the news, Jessica turned to Yuki and asked, "Are you sure you want to watch all that at a time like this?"

"I have to know at least a little of what's going on in the world," Yuki said.

It was at this moment that a female reporter from ABC news, stationed around a jail in New York, gave the report none of them were prepared to hear: "It is right here where Miranda Carlson, the woman who killed former Belles member Joan Lennox, is now being held in custody. In a week, she will be going on trial under second- degree murder charges. According to a statement giving by Carlson, while she expresses remorse for Lennox's family and friends, the way she sees things, the singer's time was up. She believes Lennox demonstrated herself to be a hypocrite by telling people they would be better off without possessions and wars while she surrounded herself with luxury and conflict of all sorts, and she believes such people don't deserve to be in this world. She'd ended her statement with the popular old saying from the height of the Belles' popularity, 'A belle always raises hell'."

Jessica felt her stomach revolting as she heard this, made all the worst when they showed a picture of the woman with a ponytail and glasses, which had been her mother's signature look in the later years.

"Jessica, are you feeling okay?" Shannon asked, now looking more scared than before.

"Is something wrong?" Yuki said.

"Jessica looks like she's going to be sick."

Yuki turned to look at Jessica, and seeing her putting a hand around her mouth as her face turned green, he went over to her and said, "Are you feeling sick, Jessica?"

Jessica nodded, and in that instance, she covered her mouth and ran over to the bathroom, then knelt over the toilet and vomited until there was nothing left inside of her stomach.

When she'd finished retching, she looked up to see Yuki standing in front of her, handing her a napkin to wipe her mouth in along with a fizzy drink that must have been some sort of anti-acid.

"Drink that to help settle your stomach," he said. "I don't know what made you sick, but I'm guessing seeing that news report didn't help out in any way."

Jessica sipped the drink slowly, already feeling a little relief wash over her body. Yuki put a hand around her shoulder, and the look of worry on his face gave her the feeling that at least for now, he felt as much concern for her as he did for Shannon a while ago. When she gathered the strength to speak again, she said, "Didn't it scare you just how much that woman looks like Mum? Seeing her with the glasses and headband, it's almost as if she believes she actually _is_ her."

"And apparently, it's not just in looks that she was similar to your mom," Yuki said. "She had a somewhat similar background as well, having come from divorced parents and being a poor student despite showing some strong talent in certain subjects. When the Belles first became famous when she was in the eighth grade, she listened to all their songs and read all news on them obsessively. Joan became her idol, and she would dress like her and even quote things she'd say in interviews. And when she got older, she even married a Japanese man."

Jessica had heard fragments of this on the news, but hearing all this at once started making her feel weak all over again. But because she was curious, she asked, "Do you know what made her suddenly hate Mum so much?"

"At first, she took some issue with Joan's views on organized religion. But what really fueled her hatred was going through all her newer songs and seeing the statements made about how endless luxury is destroying us and how we should all work for peace. The way she saw things, Joan didn't live by her professed philosophy because she surrounded herself with luxury while her personal life was a mess. And as her delusions became worse, she started seeing Joan as a force of evil that needed to be eliminated if humanity was to be saved…"

"Stop," Jessica said. "I don't think I can go on hearing about this. It's all just so awful."

"I understand," Yuki said. "I wouldn't want to make you feel sick or anxious again."

"Don't you ever feel this way, Yuki, as if taking in how messed up this situation isn't just destroying you emotionally, but physically as well?"

"I've felt like that every day since your mom died," Yuki admitted. "I'm exhausted every morning because I can never get more than two hours of sleep a night, and my head and stomach hurt throughout the day because I either think too much about everything or try to ignore it all, sometimes by eating nothing but junk or by trying to concentrate only on my artwork. But no matter what I do, the pain and sickness is still there, and I find myself worrying that I might never move on at all."

"But we must, somehow," Jessica said.

"I agree," Yuki said. Then, walking over to the sink, he said, "But right now, I want you to be honest with me about something." Picking up the blue and white bottle of sleeping pills that Jessica hadn't realized she'd left behind last night, he asked, "Have you been taking these?"

Jessica gulped. She'd done her best to hide the pills ever since she'd gotten here because she knew how Yuki would react to finding them. In the past couple of years, both her mum and Yuki had turned against the drug culture they'd once embraced, in large part because of their commitment to providing a healthy home life for Shannon.

Her mum would often have candid discussions with Jessica about her past drug usage, saying how it all began with the sleeping pills she took to get a good night's rest and the amphetameme she and the other Belles would take to control their weight, and how she then moved on to using marijuana, LSD, and even heroin at one point. "It all seemed like a nice way to liberate yourself back then, but now that I think about it, they all just dragged you into a waste land that's very hard get yourself out of in the long run," she'd once said. She even admitted that one her biggest disagreements with Paula these days was how she and Laurie continued to smoke marijuana on a regular basis despite leading very family-oriented lives, even growing it on the farm they kept in Southern England despite it almost resulting in arrest after complaints from a neighbor. After Paula's arrest in the spring for marijuana possession at an airport, she'd complained in a phone call to Jessica, "Just what is it going to take for that woman to learn? She may as well as goodbye to her image as an innocent granny-song writing mummy if she's going to get herself into scandals like this!"

With such views on drugs, Jessica could never admit to her that she'd taken marijuana herself several times at parties, and would sometimes take sleeping pills when her sports teams went on overnight trips for games. Not enough to become addicted, but occassionlly, as some other teenagers did, and the most trouble she got into for it was when her father found a joint she'd tossed somewhere in her room. He'd gotten upset, but all he did was forbid her from going to any more parties for a month. However, she felt that if her mother had caught her, she wouldn't have been let off that easily. And if Yuki had done so, it would have been much worse. He might have gone so far as convincing her mum not to let Jessica come over anymore, as far as she knew.

But now, he seemed more tired than angry as he faced Jessica. And so, gathering up her courage, she said, "I've been taking them because I'm having a hard time sleeping lately. It either takes me long to fall asleep, or else I have bad dreams if I do."

"I see, but you don't have to take pills to help you sleep. You do remember those herbal teas I make to help with sleep?"

"Yes, but they almost never help you stay asleep for longer than four hours." Also, they tasted just plain awful, but she wasn't going to admit this now.

"But I still don't want you taking them so much. If you're having trouble sleeping, then come see me in the studio or even call your father if that's what you prefer. The last thing I want to see is you becoming addicted to them and then turning to other drugs. Now, be honest with me: have you used these before?"

"Yes. During trips for games," Jessica said, knowing that if she lied, it would only make things worse.

"Only then, or on other occasions too?"

"No. Only then," Jessica said, telling the truth.

"Have you used other drugs before?"

"Just marijuana in a couple of parties, but not that often," Jessica said, wondering what sort of reaction this would inspire.

But instead of getting angry, Yuki just nodded patiently. "Okay. Now, I want to make one thing clear with you: if you want to keep having regular visits and allowances, I don't want to hear any more about you using drugs. If you think you need the sleeping pills, only take them about once a week, but no more than that. However, if you go on with this, I will have to limit how often you come here and how much money you get. I don't want you to be bringing in any more problems than we already have, especially for Shannon's sake."

"All right. I understand," Jessica said.

"Don't get me wrong. I appreciate how you came to your mother's funeral and are doing so much to help Shannon. I care a lot about you despite how I act around you sometimes, and I don't want to see you drift away from the family after all we've been through. But if you're going to behave in a dangerous way, it will only make things worse for us, and I'll have to do whatever it takes to maintain any stability we have left."

Jessica nodded. It was hard to argue with his reasoning, whatever her personal feelings about it may be.

"Now, are you feeling better?"

"I think so," Jessica said.

"Good. Now let's go back with Shannon and forget about watching all this bad news for a while. Can't get any stability if we go on with the things that are bad for us."


	6. Chapter 6

Despite all the wild hopes Joan had for her first meeting with her mother, Sharron's own excitement started to wan away the moment they were within steps of the inn where she was staying.

The first thing she noticed was the oversized dumpster that was not that far from the parking lot, and how there were soda cans, torn grocery bags, and candy wrappers littered all over the sidewalks. This wasn't a place where wealthy tourists booked a week's stay, but rather where the down and out went to stay when they were trying to escape from somewhere. And knowing part of Joan's mother's background and how cautious her uncle was about her circumstances, it wasn't hard for Sharron to imagine that she may be one of those unfortunate ones.

But there was no hope of getting Joan to notice this reality. "If I were to have a lot of money someday, I'd probably skip out on all the fancy pansy hotels and see what it's like at places like this. After all, I hear that most artists get their inspiration from these sorts of experiences."

"Oh, look at yourself, Joan, still longing for your mum to be some accomplished princess," Sharron teased.

"We still know nothing yet about her situation, Sharron. Until we see her for ourselves, anything can be possible," Joan said.

"Your uncle really didn't give you even a hint of what your mother does now?"

"No. He refuses to bring anything up about that when I ask, and Dad does the same. It's so frustrating."

Sharron sighed. She knew Joan never gave up on something if nothing could satisfy her curiosity. And as she noticed Joan opening the door to the entrance, she realized there was no turning back now. Whether Joan's mother really was as well off as her daughter wanted to believe she was, or she was struggling to support herself after her battle with mental illness, they were both going to have to face the truth now regardless of whether they were prepared or not.

Joan walked up to the front desk and said, "Excuse me? Could you tell me how to head to room 216?"

The man at the front desk gave her simple directions, after which Joan started leading the way for Sharron, practically dashing through the lobby before getting to the stairs.

"Think you're ready for this, Sharron," she asked once they were halfway through.

"I hope so," Sharron answered, not wanting to give away her doubts to her friend.

"Don't worry too much about it. If she's anything like Dad, we're in for a good time no matter what she does now."

Once they were on the second floor, Joan started sprinting around the lobby, not stopping until they were standing right in front of room 216. Once there, she removed her glasses and started brushing her hair with her fingers. "I don't want to look all shabby when Mum sees me," she said.

"You really don't look that bad with glasses, Joan. In fact, you seem more plain without them than with them sometimes."

Joan laughed. "Tell that to the boys downtown who constantly ignore me whenever I go out wearing those old things."

"They ignore you because they know you'll raise hell if they attempt doing anything that upsets you."

"Yeah. I can see how that may be the case too. But either way, I don't want to wear spectacles right now."

And once she was sure she didn't look too shabby, Joan knocked on the door, a little too confident that they were in for a good time.

"Hello?" a soft voice with an American accent answered. "Is this Joan?"

Joan beamed. "Yes, this is Joan. Do you mind if we come in and see you?"

"Of course. I've been waiting so long for this, as I'm sure you've been too."

When she opened the door, Joan and Sharron got their first glimpse of the woman. She was short and perhaps a little too thin, with a small scar around her check and dark circles around her eyes. She also had shoulder-length hair that was just as curly as her daughter's, and wore a simple green dress along with small, ruby earrings.

"Hello, Joan," she said, putting her arm around her daughter's shoulder. "I'm so glad that we're finally getting to chance to meet again after all these years."

"I'm glad to finally see you too, Mum," Joan said, her voice slightly trembling as she managed to say that last word, and the two of them embraced.

Sharron looked around the woman's room for any signs of who she was and what she did. To her disappointment, she seemed to have brought little along with her. There was a large red suitcase placed beside the bed, and all Sharron could see in it were blouses and socks. A small box beside the lamppost appeared to store some sort of jewelry, and a paperback romance novel was alongside it. The bed was well-made, there was nothing randomly scattered around the floors or desks, and everything else seemed in good order. There were no signs of records or instruments anywhere, not even a magazine clipping of a pop star. But then again, Frances Lennox was too old to be a star struck music fan. She probably had more in common in Sharron's own mother than she did with the wild American schoolgirls they always saw in the movies.

But probably the most interesting item she saw was a picture of a small house with three people huddled together as they smiled for the camera. There were two children, with the oldest appearing to be a boy who looked no older than six, and the youngest being a little girl only a few years older than him, with rosy cheeks and a dress that resembled that of the woman who must have been her mother.

 _Hold on,_ Sharron thought, finally realizing something important. _That woman must be Joan's mother. She has the same hair, figure, and even the same dress. But could those really be her children? Surely, she would have said something to Mike and Gretchen if she'd started another family when she was away, wouldn't she?_

Of course, she knew better than to utter a word about it to Joan. Let her enjoy a few moments of excitement and wonder before she realized the full extent of what her mother had done. Sooner or later, she would see the photo herself and ask questions which she would not permit to go unanswered.

And already, Joan seemed to have a boatload of questions. "Where are you living now, Mum? Are you still in New York, or did you choose to settle down somewhere else? Have you seen Dad at all these past couple of years, or are you planning to…?"

Frances laughed. "One question at a time, dear," she said. "First of all, no, I no longer live in New York. Just staying in New York state felt like too much for me, where everyone always seemed too busy to notice you and it felt impossible to stay well because of all this stuff that went on around you. So, I left all that behind and moved to a nice little place in Connecticut. A lot goes on over there too, but it never feels as overwhelming as it is in New York."

"And what about Dad? Have you tried to get in contact with him?"

At hearing this, Frances' expression appeared pained and uneasy. "I tried calling him multiple times before I left, intending to explain certain things and express my interest in seeing him again, but he would never answer, and even hung up once upon realizing it was me."

Joan looked almost as sad as her mother did. "But why would he do that? Dad's usually the nicest person I know, even nicer than my friend Sharron over here. I figured he'd love to meet up with you again, but for some reason, he hates talking about you. It's as if he's purposely trying to forget you."

Frances sighed. "Joan, you must know that I wasn't always the best wife and mother."

"Why? Because you were sick at some point? That could happen to anyone, including a lot of my friends' parents after everything they had to live through during the war."

"It's a little more complicated than that. You see, your father's family never really approved of me. In their eyes, I was just some wild American girl looking to get together with the first British boy I met, and it didn't help matters that he started meeting up with me at pubs every night. I first came over to England with some friends as part of a trip sponsored by a relative of theirs who worked in international business, thinking anywhere had to be better than the state of misery New York was in during the depression. Well, it turned out that England was just as stricken by the depression as any other place was, and my friends and I quickly got bored because of how little we could do given how tight money was. And that's when the nightly trips to the pub began."

"And is that where you met Dad?" Joan asked.

"Not at the pub itself, but as we were walking through downtown Liverpool. He was with this large group of bosom friends who'd started flirting with my friend Charlotte as they saw us go by. Your father noticed the new red dress I was wearing and complimented me on it, saying 'Nice dress you got there, miss.' Given how much I couldn't resist getting compliments by men back then, I started giggling and thanked him. Then, realizing we were all going to the pub, we decided to stick together there, and that's how we got to know each other. Funny enough, Charlotte ended up hating George, the man who flirted with her the most, but your father and I got close quite fast, since we both liked talking a lot and were into these delicious brandies they served there. And I think you can guess where things went from there."  
Joan smiled. "He became your boyfriend after that, didn't he?"

"He did, but things were always complicated for us. His parents didn't like me at all, and as much as your uncle Mike tried to make things easier for us despite his own doubts, there was just no way we could them to support our relationship. Of course, we only got closer over time, and we ended up marrying in secret exactly nine months before you were born, and it was two events which forced your father's parents to finally show some concern for us: my pregnancy and the start of the war."

Joan knew this part of the story. Her mother had wanted to go back to New York with her father after the attacks in London, but because of a lack of money and how dangerous air travel could get, her father had convinced her to stay with his family for the time being. She'd given birth to Joan just days after a nearby air raid, and according to Uncle Mike, her panic over that event had led to a state of hysteria where she kept demanding to know if Joan was alive and would holler out if she heard even the slightest noise coming through her hospital room. The nurses recommended plenty of rest for her, but warned that if this went on for too long, she might have to be placed in an asylum. As a result, her grandparents were constantly looking out for her when they took her home, while Uncle Mike took care of Joan and her father reluctantly left to serve in the navy, where he'd stay until 1944, when he'd return to find that many things had changed with his family.

"So, after your father left, I became devastated. The only thing that seemed to give me any comfort was going back to those same pubs where we first spend time together. Almost all the money your father left behind for me was going towards booze, restaurants, and the cinema; a desperate attempt to relive better times. Before long, I was seeing another man as well. I can't even remember much about him now other than all the fancy places he'd take me that were not far from home. As you could probably, I was just being foolish. I didn't even give much thought to your needs back then, which brings me more shame than anything else."

But as her mother made all these confessions, Joan didn't feel much hatred towards her. In later interviews, she'd reflect on how she eventually realized just how much she and her mother had in common. "We were both trapped in such bloody awful times where we were so confused about what we wanted and could think of no better way to deal with our problems than to seek excessive pleasure. People think that it just happens to actors and rock stars, but my mother has lived quite an ordinary life, and she still fell into this trap."

However, it would the ringing of the telephone, which immediately got Frances' attention, that would make Joan become aware of what her mother hadn't told her so far.

With her eyes darting around the room and her mother's belongings, she barely took notice of the picture of Frances and the two children at first. A while later, upon failing to find the slightest trace of a record or instrument, she turned back to the picture with some curiosity."

"Sharron, could you see that picture?" she asked.

Sharron got startled by her request. Taking a deep breath, she said, "I…I did catch a glimpse of it. Seems quite sweet, don't you think?"

"But doesn't the woman in it look an awful lot like my mum?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe that's just a friend of hers, or her sister…"

"Mum had three brothers, and no sisters. Also, I doubt she could have a friend who's practically her identical twin."

"So, what are you thinking?"

"That she's hiding something from me. Chances are, those two kids are her own, and she must have formed another family when she moved to Connecticut. She probably has no intention of living with Dad and me again, and just came her to utter a little apology to me and get back to her perfect new life." As she spoke, her voice was trembling, and Sharron worried that she would soon break into tears.

"Now, Joan, I'm sure your mother still cares about you. Even if she did form a new family, that doesn't mean she wants nothing to do with you anymore."

"If she really did care, she would have said something by now!" And in a fit of rage, she threw the picture onto the floor and started marching for the door.

Upon seeing what her daughter was doing, Frances told the person she was speaking to, "I'm sorry. I'll have to call you back later." And after hanging up, she started going after Joan, saying, "Joan, please don't go. I meant to explain things to you, but with the call, I just had to put it off."

"No! You're just making excuses!" Joan yelled. "I thought Uncle Mike was being too harsh towards you, but now it seems that he was right all along. You just had to replace Dad and me as soon as you could, didn't you? Was the thought of going back to boring old England so unbearable that you were willing to leave your real family behind for some bloody fantasy of a good life?"

"Don't do this, Joan! I love you. Nothing I did since leaving England was done so that I wouldn't have to see you again. I begged your uncle to let you come live with me, but…"

"To hell with all that! You never cared at all, and you know it!"

And with that said, she stormed out of the hotel room, with Sharron sadly following her along. Frances was left lying in her bed, desperately crying over how terribly things had gone in her attempt to connect with Joan again.

It would take Joan about ten more years, after she'd gone through a difficult marriage in the midst of her growing fame and iconic status, struggled to maintain an active role in Jessica's life despite all her most sincere efforts, and found love in someone who shared her passions in a way Christian never could, to understand exactly why her mother had chosen to move on the way she did. And it would be her mother, more so than even her bandmates, who'd be one of the few people that never judged her negatively because of how she handled all that craziness, since she'd been through the same thing.


	7. Chapter 7

Around a month after Joan's first meeting with both her future band mates and her mother, sixteen-year-old Rhiannon Steel had her own encounter which would set her future career on course.

Of all the Belles, Rhiannon was probably the one who had the hardest childhood. After her mother's death when she was only two, her father had fallen apart, going from having steady work at a steel mill to having to take on a series of temporary jobs that never paid enough to cover all expenses. His remarriage to a cleaning lady when Rhiannon was nine caused a short- lived period of stability for them, but their combined incomes could only make things better for so long, and by the time Rhiannon was thirteen, she was already working to help support the family. She started by babysitting for her neighbors and shoveling sidewalks during the winter, which she did for three years before applying to work at The Mayberry Restuarant in downtown Liverpool. Upon getting that position, she started working full time, dropping out of school and dedicating most of her time to making sure she could provide at least some support for her struggling family.

As a young child, however, she'd been far from capable of such responsibilities. Until she was ten, she was strongly prone to nearly every childhood illness, and much of her earliest memories involved her staying closely behind her bed covers, either suffering from chills or heavily sweating because of a fever, and trying to make herself feel better by turning the pages of one of the library books her father had brought home for her. Because of how often she missed school, those books were often her only means of getting an education. It was often easy to get thorough a story if her illness was mild, but on those days when it was at its worst, it was hard for her to read without getting headaches or having the print come off blurry. As a result, despite all her best efforts, she always behind in her classes, and by the time she dropped out of school, she could barely read and write as well as her peers.

And so, every morning or afternoon, she'd resigned herself to putting on the bright pink dresses required of all waitresses at the Mayberry, packing up small meals, and then plastering on a nice smile as she served the many customers who came in for meals she could rarely afford herself. Whether she'd have to do this for the rest of her life occasionally haunted her thoughts, but she would brush these thoughts off by reminding herself that it was better to be contributing during a difficult situation than to be sitting back and doing nothing, because it was then that you were really setting yourself up for failure.

On that day when everything changed for Rhiannon, it started out as one of those bad days where she didn't bring any food and was being forced to overtime with few breaks, having to bring over and pick up trays as fast as possible or else risk having Mr. Farwell, her manager, shout all sorts of awful profanities at her as his way of urging her on. She'd managed to get through three hours of this constant hustle before Farwell started dragging in Olivia, a nineteen-year-old who worked evening shifts, telling her, "It's a busy day today, girl. If these chaps don't get their orders in as soon as possible, they start causing a racket in here, and if there's one thing I can't stand, it's seeing any sort of unruliness in my restaurant. Just as I do my part to keep things in shape, so I expect from you. So, keep on working and don't let me catch you being idle for even a second. Is that clear?"

Olivia nodded. Farwell gave them this speech every time the restaurant got busy, and all the waitresses knew that it was best to just agree with him and move on than to annoy him with complaints about hearing the same thing every day. If they ever attempted this, as did one new girl on her first day, he'd give them a harsh scolding, threatening to cut their salaries as a consequence.

"Now Rhiannon, you can sit down for at least three minutes. But if anyone else comes in, you go on straight ahead and serve them. No need to burden poor Olivia here with extra work when she's only just gotten here," Farwell demanded.

"Yes, Mr. Farwell," Rhiannon said, sitting down in an uncomfortable wooden chair that made her back ache when she scooted over in it. She then sighed, doing her best to ignore her empty stomach and blistered feet. But it seemed like every few seconds, she'd feel a throbbing pain in the soles of her blue slippers, or else her stomach would growl when she took noticed of some big meal of steak and baked potatoes a customer was devouring just a few tables behind her. None of these people seemed to take any notice of her, and she couldn't blame them for it. If she could come to a place like this, cheap as it was, and had plenty of good friends by her side to keep her amused, as many of these customers did, she'd probably overlook the tired, hungry waitress sitting alone too.

However, tonight there weren't just ravenous people looking for some quick tea before going home for the night. Farwell appeared to have a band booked to perform as well, because she saw several men carrying in microphones, guitars, and a drum set into a small stage that was set up in the middle of the restaurant for the few evening entertainers that were interested in coming in. Usually, it was a pianist or a jazz band, but from the look of these instruments, it looked to Rhiannon like it was one of those rock and roll bands that boys at nearby universities liked forming.

"Excuse me, but could you let us know if someone named Brenda Stein is here?" a young man with a cockney accent asked Farwell. His dark hair was greasy and disheveled, and he wore a black leather jacket along with blue jeans. Rhiannon couldn't help thinking that he was probably one of those teddy boys her parents were always warning her about, who had a rather eccentric way of dress while also having a reputation for delinquency, although some of the girls at Mayberry's claimed this wasn't always true.

"I don't keep track of names here, my boy," Farwell replied. "Could you tell me how she looks like?"

"She has long black hair that she always wears in a ponytail, these big broad arms and shoulders but an otherwise slim figure, and she's neither too tall nor too short. When we saw her earlier today, she was wearing a blue sweater and a brown skirt. Does any of that sound familiar to you?"

"Perhaps. Does she also have one of those big noses that Jews always have?"

Rhiannon shuddered upon hearing this. There were several rumors that Farwell was anti sematic, having once refused to offer a kosher meal to an Orthodox Jewish family and having mocked a Jewish girl for her lack of money, telling her that her father ought to have boat loads of pounds in the house based on how well others of her kind were always doing. Hearing him make a comment like that seemed to confirm this.

The man frowned a little. "Yes, she does, now that I think about it. And she is Jewish. Quite devout too, in fact. I hope you're not trying to imply that you have any issues with that, are you?"

"Of course not," Farwell said. "Everyone's welcome here. Anyway, I did see someone like that come in just ten minutes ago. I might lead you over to her, if you want. And may I ask what business you have with her? Is she your girl or something?"

The man shook his head. "No, nothing like that. She owns a music store in a town close by, and she's recently agreed to be the manager for our band."

"If that's the case, she's not doing a very good job at it. She should have come up to me the moment she got here and told me that she was representing your band."

Olivia came up to Farwell, looking quite nervous. "Actually, Mr. Farwell, that woman did speak with me when she arrived, but I thought you were busy, so I told her to wait until you were no longer occupied."

Farwell sighed. "Oh, you silly girl. Have you learned nothing from your time working here? Any special guests need to come to me as soon as they arrive, no matter what else I may have going on. Seeing how easily you forget things, it's no wonder you were having so much trouble finding work elsewhere."

 _And he wonders why he's still single,_ Rhiannon thought in disgust. Luckily, another member of the band came up to them and said, "Brenda's sitting in the back of the restaurant, Alex. She keeps asking if I know when Roger will get here."

"I happen to have some news on that, Mitchell, and I already know Brenda won't be happy about it," Alex said.

Turning around towards the back pf the restaurant, Rhiannon got her first glimpse of Brenda Stein, the woman who would go on to become the manager of the Belles. She was exactly as Alex described, looking as professional as any man who held a similar job as hers. There was also this look of sharp alertness on her face which Rhiannon would soon learn to be a sign that she was taking everything in, making close observations and then deciding how to act based on the circumstances. No doubt she'd just heard Alex and Farwell speaking of her in addition to that last comment about the attendance of the others, since she sighed and looked like she was preparing for some disappointing news.

Alex, Mitchell, and Farwell went up to her a while later, and Brenda shook hands with all of them. "Hello there," she said. "How much longer should it take to get the band ready for tonight?"

"That's where we're having trouble, Brenda," Alex admitted. "Roger came down with the flu this morning, so he won't be able to show up."

"And who is this Roger?" Farwell asked.

"He's their drummer," Brenda said. "Not the most responsible man I know, but still quite good at what he does. The Queen's Men have only had one public performance so far. With one member missing on the second, who knows how things will go for the lads, even if they can carry on without Roger."

Mention of a drummer had Rhiannon thinking. When she was little, she used to enjoy playing with an old drum her father always left around the sitting room. Recently, she'd gotten into the habit of using it to play along with music of all kinds, rather it was the Brazilian samba records her stepmother like listening to or the latest rock hits on the radio. Her father told her she had a good sense of rhythm, but Rhiannon knew that parents weren't the best judges of your talent. However, she felt she'd practiced enough over the years to pitch in if that was what this band needed. Being up on stage didn't frighten her nearly as much as it did other girls, and it would give her a break from just sitting around unhappily while awaiting her turn for waitressing once again. Perhaps Farwell would even give her a raise if she was good enough.

And so, gathering up her courage, Rhiannon got up from the table, walked over to the small group still trying to work things out, and said, "Excuse me? I happen to have some experience drumming, so if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to help out for tonight's performance if no one else can."

Farwell was dumbstruck, while Brenda turned towards Rhiannon with a curious glance. "What's your name, young lady?" she asked, sounding like a schoolteacher.

"Rhiannon Steel."

"And it appears that you're a waitress here at Mayberry's. Is that right?" she asked, getting a glimpse at Rhiannon's dress.

"Yes." And she wondered if knowing this would make Brenda less interested in adding her in.

But instead, Brenda turned to Farwell. "Would you mind if she were to help us for the night, Mr. Farwell?"

Farwell shrugged. "I don't know. Do you really think people are still going to like your band's performance if they notice a girl is playing the drums?"

"If she's good enough, I don't think anyone will care," Brenda answered. "So far, it's too late to call in a substitute. We're going to have to settle in with whoever has the capacity to play the drums, and if it happens to be one of your waitresses, then that's how it'll have to be. Besides, I think such an experience would do a lot of good for the girl."

"If you're in for it, Brenda, then so am I," Alex said.

"Same here," Mitchell said, shooting a wink at Rhiannon.

Farwell sighed. "Well, it'll certainly give people something to talk about when they see a girl drummer. Go ahead then, Rhiannon. Let's see how well you can play."

Rhiannon nodded, feeling both excited and nervous about what she'd just gotten herself into.

…

A week later, wearing her best red dress, Rhiannon prepared to perform once again. Only now, having had the chance to practice along with the Queen's Men for four days in advance, she was much more aware of what she was in for than she did during that first performance at Mayberry's.

On that day, her drumming had come across as a little clumsy at first, and she kept being bothered by the strange looks she kept getting from the small audience. But then, just as she often did when practicing at home, she took a few seconds to listen to the beat of the music the boys were playing, and once she became familiar with it, she was more capable of following along, and the audience started clapping and cheering them on.

She immediately took notice of how surprised Farwell looked. He'd been shaking his head and looking like he wanted to yank her off the stage at the beginning, but the further on she went, the more startled he seemed to become. Whether this victory of hers pleased or annoyed him at the time, she couldn't tell, although over two decades later, he became quite proud of boosting about how he found "the world's first great female drummer" in his very own restaurant. After the Belles became famous, a picture of Rhiannon and the Queen's Men would hang through the walls of Mayberry's entrance, although not once would he be able to have his former waitress come over.

Meanwhile, Brenda was quite obviously impressed, joining in on the audience's applause when the song ended, and she immediately offered Rhiannon a temporary spot on the band. "We've been having trouble with Roger for quite a while now. Although he was at the Queen's Men's first live performance, he always seems more interested in girls and drinking than attending our regular practicing sessions. Alex and Mitchell have talked about possibly kicking him out, but I've been hesitant about that. What I'm thinking is that because he's now sick, we might give him up to a week off and have you come in as a replacement for the time being. Do you think you could do it, Rhiannon?"

Of course, this had required a talk with Farwell, and surprisingly, he agreed to allow her to adjust her working hours to make time for practices and live performances, especially after Brenda promised that the Queen's Men could come back every two weeks. "All good businesses need a good attraction for money, and if that has to be a rock and roll band, then so be it," he'd said. "Besides, I have plenty of other girls here who could fill in for Rhiannon if necessary."

And that's how Rhiannon Steel found herself performing once again at a nightclub called Wilson's on a Saturday night.

"Ready to go, Rhiannon?" Brenda asked. She'd spend a great deal of time making sure Rhiannon was well-prepared, going over everything from how she was playing the drums to her outfit and makeup. She even made sure she'd had something to eat, having been shocked to find out she hadn't had any supper during that first performance. This attention to all the needs of her performers would come into good use once she became manager of the Belles, whom would all prove to be a challenge to her at times. Alex and Mitchell had done a lot for her too, giving her good feedback during practice sessions and giving her good advice for going up on stage. They never seemed to look down on her for being the only girl in the group, although they did like flirting around with her sometimes. But with Brenda around, they all made sure to stick to business, and all went quite well most of the time.

"I think I am," Rhiannon said.

"Remember to just focus on the music, not the audience. If you have a good idea of what you're doing, the way you see everyone else reacting shouldn't be of strong concern to you. If anything, they're usually loving it if that's the case, as Alex likes saying."

Rhiannon smiled. "I'll be sure to remember that, Brenda."

"Now go ahead," she said, patting Rhiannon on the shoulder. "I'm quite confident that you'll do well once again."

Rhiannon nodded, and walked up on stage once again.


	8. Chapter 8

_All the lonely strangers,_

 _Where could they ever belong?_

From "Elliot Ripley" by the Belles

For as long as a month, Joan was not quite herself. While on most days, she chattered away over the most random of things, she was now often quiet, only speaking up if someone spoke to her first, and in some cases, giving out only angry or hesitant responses. And on the days when she acted up, while she was usually accompanied by Sharron, she was more likely to do so when alone, walking through the local park all by herself if skipping school or scribbling up foul notes to the mean girls in her classes using comments she'd thought up on her own, instead having Sharron offering up her own quirky witticisms to make things more interesting.

"Just what do you think is going on with that girl?" Aunt Gretchen asked Mike one night after this had been going on for several weeks.

"I have a feeling that something happened to her that she doesn't want us to know about," Mike answered.

"Maybe she has been taken advantage of by one of those no- good Teddy boys, or perhaps she got into a fight with her father. There's a chance she could also have faced some serious punishment after getting herself into mischief at school. You just never know with a girl like Joan, Mike."

"Or couldn't it just be something that all girls her age go through? I'm sure you haven't already forgotten your own teen years so soon, have you, Gretchen?"

Gretchen shook her head. "A woman never forgets those years, but I was nowhere near as wild as Joan is. I had plenty of friends in school and never failed to get good marks in all my classes. I also showed much respect towards my parents, following their rules and never giving them much of a hard time when I was upset. But then again, I had a stable childhood. Joan didn't, and perhaps that's why she's as bad as she is. I wouldn't be too surprised if she ends up being just like her parents, going nowhere."

"Now, Gretchen, I think it's too soon to be making those sort of assumptions," Mike said. "If she was to put more effort into her classes this year, she might have a chance of doing well enough in her O-levels and getting into a decent university. One of her art teachers told me that she thinks Joan would be a good fit for the local art school over here in Liverpool. It may not seem like much of an education to you, but some of the most successful students there go on to be good teachers or get jobs in commercial advertising not so far from home. There's much around the corner for her if she wants to try."

"A girl like her at art school? Have some sense, Mike," Gretchen said with a scoff. "Those schools have some of the maddest people in the world. If you'd read about artists and the things they've done, the beliefs they hold, you'd never want someone as impressionable as Joan anywhere within their sight."

After she'd said this, she noticed Joan sulking around nearby, wearing a baggy old sweater and trousers and giving both her aunt and uncle a dark scowl. "Why are you both looking at me like that? Go ahead with your little talk. I already how big of a disappointment I am, how I'm getting nowhere. There's nothing you say that can surprise me, absolutely nothing at all!"

"Joan, don't get so angry at us," Mike said. "We don't think you're going to be a failure. We're just concerned about your attitude lately. If you start losing interest in school and friends and chores, you'll only make things harder for yourself. Instead of just going around on your own and not saying anything, why not just tell us what's wrong? We may not be able to solve things for you, but it always helps to have someone there to listen and give you some advice."

"That's what you say all the time, Uncle Mike, but we all know your true opinion of the whole matter," Joan said. "You and Aunt Gretchen think I'm pretty much doomed to become my mother. You think about that every day, probably since the day I was born, when my mother started having all those panic attacks. If you're off to a bad start, it's hard to find your way later, don't you agree?"

"Now, young lady, do not speak to us in that way. Have we not taught you anything at all?" Gretchen demanded.

"Oh, you've taught me a lot. I just choose not to go through every bloody word you say."

And before she could think twice about it, she finally confessed to her wrongdoing, "And by the way, I already know about Mother betraying the family. Biggest surprise of my life, I guess I can say."

Mike was dumbstruck, doing nothing but gasping at his niece in shock. It was Gretchen who now asked the concerned questions: "How do you know about that, Joan. Did your father tell you, or did you…?"

"Yes. I went to meet up with Mother at the hotel despite all your warnings against it," Joan admitted. "And perhaps it will please you to know that it was all bloody terrible. She kept acting all nice about things, as if she had nothing to hide. But she just had to have a picture of her precious two new kids set up in her room, and absolutely none of me or Dad, if that makes you any happier about the whole incident. So yes, you were right about her all along. She stopped caring about me because she wanted to start all over, get a lovely new family in the American suburbs to make up for the disgraced one she left behind in Britain. Selfishness as its best, I know realize."

"Now, Joan, I know what she did was wrong, but I think you're being too judgmental towards her," Mike said, finally speaking up. "The older you get, the more you'll realize how important it for mothers to do well with their children from the moment they're born. If those first few months are filled with complications, it has a lasting impact on how her relationship with the child will be as they grow up. In your mother's case, her illness along with your father's absence made it difficult for her to give you the care you needed back then. Because of this, I think she probably started wishing for a second chance, to have another child whom she could give all that care she couldn't give you back when you were born. Considering the circumstances, I thought keeping you out of the way would be what was best for all of us. Your mother could move on and have the family she never had before, and you could go on living with us without having to deal with the trouble that comes with trying to reunite a kid with a long lost relative that has gone on to a better living situation than they had when they were last together."

Joan nodded slowly. "And perhaps it should have stayed that way," she said before once again sulking away.

Gretchen sighed once she was out of sight. "Mike, you've got to do something about that girl. She's not going to get over what happened with her mother that easily. Why not have her see a psychiatrist, or have a talk with the headmistress at her school so they could help her handle it?"

But Mike said nothing, deeply regretting all he'd been hiding from Joan for so long.

…

Things only seemed to be getting worse for Paula as well. Within a month after her first meeting with Joan, her father's condition reached the point when it was now impossible for him to talk. Meetings between him and his family now consisted of him passing around notes while they scrawled in answers using loose-leaf paper the nurse now made sure to always drop off before visits began. Paula continued to play the guitar and read for him, but doing so now made her more depressed than it did before. Her mother sometimes had to fight back tears as she watched her daughter trying to go on with the way things were before despite how dramatically her father's situation was changing. "It's going to become much more difficult for her once the inevitable happens," she admitted to Elaine Kendal, a friend from church one day. "But I just can't get her to stop doing it. The only thing worse than pretending everything is normal is putting everything good on hold because of how hard it is to go on with it due to your feelings of guilt."

"And so it is," Elaine, a mother of five and wife of a modestly successful bookkeeper, told her. "Paula is a very brave girl, Jeanette. You should be proud of how well she's handing such a hard situation. And don't forget that our home is always welcome to you and your daughters should you need any help along the way."

However, the second home Paula was finding was through Gina Harris' family. Unlike Jeanette McGuire, Lucy Harris was always home, usually baking in the kitchen or tending flowers in the large garden that surrounded the entrance of the house. Gina's three siblings were all easy-going and dedicated to helping whenever possible, always going out of their way to make Paula feel welcome. And Collin Harris, although he had a modest job as a mail carrier, appeared to be a very content man, being just as kind as everyone else in his family.

Both Collin and Lucy always asked Paula how her family was doing and requested to know whether they could assist them in any way, and although Paula understood that they meant well, this always embarrassed her. There was nothing Paula hated more than having others thinking she was helpless, and even early on, she made a point of trying to prove to others that she had no problem with handling things on her own. So, whenever Gina's parents asked her these questions, she usually answered by saying, "My family's been adjusting well enough, thank you very much. I sometimes have extra work around the house, but with some help from my sister Michelle, I always manage to get something done. However, if we ever need anything, I'll be sure to let you know."

"That's good to know, dear," Lucy Harris would then say with a smile. "From just seeing the way you behave when you're visiting us, especially when you're interacting with Gina, we can tell that you're a very polite and hard-working girl. Tell your mother and sister that we wish nothing but the best for them."

Paula always nodded and thanked Lucy for her concern, but she was always glad when these conversations ended and she could start in on the music practice sessions that she was now having regularly with Gina. They would start by going inside Gina's bedroom, where they would hear up to three songs through the radio or record player before getting out their guitars and performing what they'd just heard. This was making a big difference for Gina's performances, since she was still at a more basic level than Paula was. She sometimes complained about how they kept playing the same songs way more times than she cared for, but she still appreciated how much Paula was willing to work with her. Very few girls within her grade level cared much about performing music, with many making snarky comments over how they themselves had given up on their piano lessons years ago, or even going so far as saying that playing the guitar was a job better suited for boys. "If you really want to get anywhere, Gina, why not just join us at Willington's and try on the many dresses they have there?" one of them once asked her. "It's certainly less tiresome than sitting around playing some old guitar all afternoon."

But Gina always ignored them, giving them a smug, indifferent look to let them know she wasn't interested in their offer. The girls took this indifference to mean that she was just another hopeless case, with jokes going around that by the time she reached her final years of high school, she would probably end up in one of those homes for wayward girls after going too far with some teddy boy she barely knew. Knowing well some of the rumors that went around about her, Gina often told Paula, "If they only saw how good I'm getting with the guitar, I'm sure they'd think twice before dismissing me as a lost cause."

"That's just how it always is for girls like us," Paula said. "If we don't like the same things as everyone else, then people always assume we're strange at best, or else they think there's something wrong with us."

"And how often have other girls called you strange?"

Paula smiled. "Maybe just once or twice, I'll admit. But because of what's happening to my father, I feel like people automatically assume they must feel sorry for me, and I hate that for some reason."

Gina nodded, understanding her point. People, whether they were willing to admit it or not, usually saw you as weak in these situations, thinking that whatever hardship you were facing always brought you down and left you unwilling to do anything without the help of another person. Despite her own lack of serious difficulties, she'd felt this way a number of times before, although she'd never admitted it to anyone before. Sometimes she felt it was better to keep mum about your personal complaints and just focus on actively sorting through your problems, a belief she continued to hold during her years with the Belles.

And so, instead of going on with the conversation, she said, "Now how about we follow your own advice and focus in on our music practice instead of acting all sad over things?"

"Of course, Gina. No better way to prove all those mothers and girls wrong."

And that's when they started in on their practicing session.


	9. Chapter 9

**February 1957**

It was the Queen's Men first concert in London. Richard Jones, a record store owner who'd known Brenda Stein for two years, had offered the band a generous sum of money for performing in a nightclub called The Lion's Cage. He'd witnessed a performance they'd given a month before at another nightclub in Liverpool and had been impressed of all the member's performances, especially Rhiannon's, since he claimed he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a woman playing the drums anywhere, much less for a rock group.

Two hours before showtime, Rhiannon was going through the band's music sheets alongside Mitchell Swanson. Of the two boys in the band, Mitchell was the one who'd gotten closest to Rhiannon. Despite her hesitation, he'd come home with her several times after band practice, insisting she couldn't become a full member of the band without having at least one of the other band mates over. And much to her relief, he didn't mind her family's small house, or how her parents couldn't offer him anything fancy for meals beyond stew or beans. In fact, Mitchell himself lived in a small room upstairs from the hardware store where he worked as an assistant, and his meals often consisted of whatever he could take home from the restaurants he often visited between work and band practice. "Your place feels likes like a mansion in comparison to my sad excuse of a home," he'd said one day as they were looking through magazines in candlelight by his desk, since there was a thunderstorm that had cut the power off shortly after they'd arrived.

Mitchell had come from a working -class family not that far off from where Rhiannon currently lived, but because his father had steady work in manufacturing, they never struggled too much. He'd done well enough in school to get into the grammar school, but because he'd done poorly on his O levels, he'd failed to get into university, much to the disappointment of his family, who had been depending on him to provide a better future for them all. They'd forced him to leave home after graduation, and he'd had to work odd jobs while staying over at friend's homes for over a year before he'd gotten hired at the hardware store. It had been while there that he met Alex and started the Queen's Men. "I'd always loved playing music, and with rock and roll being so popular, I figured what better way to get well-known than by trying to create our own songs in that same style?' he'd told Rhiannon during their first practice sessions.

Right now, the two them went over some last- minute details while eating burgers from a nearby diner that Brenda had recommended. Alex was close by, but only jumped in to help them if they asked him first. Of the three of them, he was the only one who was economically well-off. His father was an accountant who was all too willing to help financially supplement the band, although he was convinced that it was just a hobby for his son. He sometimes questioned Alex's choice of fellow musicians, wondering why he couldn't just find some of his old bosom friends and perform alongside them instead, but always acted decently enough when he was around them.

"Think you're ready to get back on stage again, Rhiannon?" Mitchell asked her once they were done.

"Mitchell, how many times do I have to tell you that I'm not afraid of getting up on stage anymore? After my first time doing it, it's been quite easy for me," Rhiannon said. While it was true that she got a little nervous before she performed in public, Rhiannon did not go through that paralyzing fear some people experienced during those moments. Instead, she would imagine herself playing the drums, sometimes going over the scene a dozen times in her head before she headed onto the stage, letting that "short movie of myself", as she would later call it in interviews, give her enough confidence to go on with that activity she was slowing starting to love.

"If you say so. Sometimes when I'm onstage, I must pretend I'm alone in my small place before I can start singing. Otherwise, I feel as though I might faint."

"I thought only women tend to swoon when they're nervous."

"In that case, you better think twice before acting all high and mighty for being a female drummer. When I was at the doctor's when I was six, I got all dizzy and ended up collapsing seconds after I got a shot. If it looks like men never do something, it's because they're pretending to be much braver than anyone else."

"Thank you for letting me know men have the same fears as women," Rhiannon said with a chuckle.

"And thank you for being so understanding as a woman," Mitchell responded.

While other women her own age would soon take offense at those sorts of jokes from men, Rhiannon never made a big deal about it, thinking both genders deserved to tease each other in a good-natured way sometimes. In fact, her attitudes about this would soon make her and the other Belles the target of some second-wave feminists' criticism, with one influential magazine from the 70s claiming that "by embracing all the chauvinism of rock and roll and making their emotional dependency on men very obvious through the constant media exposure of them with their spouses and boyfriends, the Belles came across not as feminist heroes, but as foes of their own sex, being as problematic as the fairy tale princess of the past or today's overly dolled up models." When asked about this article through a 1974 interview with _Playboy_ , Rhiannon had responded, "If they think we're bad feminist role models just because we refuse to cast aside all men from our lives and go in our own direction with our music, then to hell with these feminists. Neither me nor any of the other former Belles are trying to gain Gloria Steinem's approval any more than we are Richard Nixon's. Why not let young women and teenagers hear us out for themselves and let them decide if we're good feminists, because I bet many of them would say yes without any doubt."

As they went on with their work, they were approached by Penelope Oswald, who was Brenda Stein's assistant in the music store she owned. She seemed a little too prim to Rhiannon despite being only five years older than she was, since she always insisted that the band members never smoke, drink, or cuss in her presence, but she was always supportive towards Rhiannon once concerts were around the corner.

Right now, she said, "Mitchell, would you mind if I spoke with Rhiannon alone for a while?"

"Go ahead, Penelope. I'm sure you can give her plenty of advice than neither I nor Alex could," Mitchell said.

With that said, Penelope held on to Rhiannon's hand and said, "Come along with me, Rhiannon. I've got quite a lot I'd like to tell you before we get started today."

"Okay," Rhiannon said, wondered what could be so important that Penelope wanted to have a word with her so urgently as she followed Penelope out of the practice room.

Once they were out in the hallway, she said, "So, first of all, how's it been working with these boys? They aren't giving you too much of a hard time, are they?"

This wasn't too surprising to Rhiannon. Penelope seemed to think Mitchell and Alex needed to be watched over whenever they were around her, having even once asked Brenda how comfortable she was with their "unusual" working arrangements. However, she always did her best not to make such a big deal out of Penelope's concerns, so she replied, "Everything's fine with them, Penelope. Mitchell and Alex might be the biggest gentlemen I've ever worked with, which I'm sure you never hear other girls saying about rock and roll lovers. We haven't had any issues working together so far, and they always help me out with the drums in any way they can. If I could perform with them for a living, I'd be happy to go along with it."

"Good. That's very good, Rhiannon," Penelope said. Then, lowering her voice a little, she said, "And how are things between you and Brenda?"

Rhiannon frowned. What reason could Penelope have for being so secretive about Brenda? "It's all good. She's been helping me out a lot, and we get on well enough. Why do you ask?"

Penelope turned around to see if anyone was close. Upon noticing that no one else was around, she said in her normal tone, "The matter is, Rhiannon, that I believe Brenda is a good woman. She does much to help her customers at the store and for your band, and she helped give me a job when no one else wanted to. Not that different from your situation, in fact. However, there are others who aren't very fond of her for reasons that you may find rather strange, if not completely shocking."

"What are you talking about? Do people have problems with her because she's a woman running a business and a band? Or she is doing something questionable, like, you know…?"

"Like sleeping around with the men she works with?" Penelope finished for her. "Not exactly, although there's probably a client or two who's gotten that idea into their heads. Some do have problems with her being a woman, and Jewish, on top of that. However, what has most people talking is how they don't see her enough with men outside of work, unless you count her father. In some cases, seeing a woman who shows little romantic interest in men raises as much questions as a woman who spends a little too much time with them."

"What are you trying to get at here? Are you saying Brenda is possibly frigid?" People didn't talk as much about frigid women as they used to, although Rhiannon sometimes heard other girls at work bring that up jokingly if they pointed out a handsome boy and one of them showed little interest in him. "What's the matter, Jane? Getting too frigid so soon around boys?" someone once said when a well-dressed university student had walked in with his friends.

"There are some who believe that, but that's not quite what I mean. What I mean is her interest seems to be more towards other women."

At first, this didn't come across too clearly to Rhiannon. "Interest? Interest in a romantic or sexual way? Is that where you're trying to get at?"

"Yes. That's exactly what I'm trying to say," Penelope said.

This revelation had Rhiannon gasping. Like most girls of her time, most of the things she'd heard about homosexuality were far from positive. People always spoke about it in the context of sexual perversion, telling horror stories of men who pried on other men while drunk in bars or of them secretly getting together in public lavatories. They were men who took pleasure in acting similar to women or dressing up like them, who were scornfully called fairies and sissies, or women who were much too masculine for their own good, who were called lesbians or dykes. In recent years, homosexuality had been declared a mental illness, leading some to take either less resentful views of these people or else despise them as much as always, pointing out the many supposed crimes they committed as evidence that they were less moral than everyone else.

However, Rhiannon had taken notice that for some reason, some of the worst resentment was reserved towards homosexual men. While similar women were still looked down upon, people tended to talk much less about them, and without the many condemnations that were almost always involved when bringing men up. The stories on alcoholism, lavatories, and predators seemed to exclusively involve men. Stories on lesbians tended to involve boarding school and university dormmates, and in some cases, Catholic convents, as some resentful folks at her family's Anglican church had once gossiped about at a Sunday picnic. Rhiannon herself didn't hold any strong resentment towards these people, although at the time, she didn't see at as normal either. If anyone had asked her, she would have said that they'd turned out this way because they never had much luck with those of the opposite sex when they were teenagers.

When she finally managed to speak up, she said, "How do you know about this, Penelope?"

"When I started out working at Brenda's store, I had a customer come up to me and whisper that I ought to watch out for my boss, because she had a reputation for behaving improperly around other women. I asked this woman to explain, and she said she'd been one of Brenda's old classmates, and when they'd been thirteen years old, someone had noticed Brenda kissing one of her bosom friends while they were out in the woods. They couldn't figure out whether anything else had happened between them, but from then on, most of the girls made a point of avoiding Brenda whenever possible. There was no outright teasing or reporting of the incident to the teachers or her parents. They just stopped speaking to Brenda unless they really needed to and made sure never to invite her to parties or the movies or anywhere else. Being as naïve as they were, that seemed to make more sense than shunning her for something not even they fully understood."

"And was Brenda aware of this?"

"I asked her about it a week after this woman spoke to me, and she admitted that she had once kissed a girl, and that it was this same girl who'd let her know what all the other girls in their classes were doing to her. Brenda had gotten upset about it, but she never confronted anyone about it. Like everyone else, she knew that perhaps it was better if this incident was never brought up again, even if it meant she had to continue with little to no friends for the rest of her school years. And that's how it stayed. After graduating from school, she started working in her father's music store, taking over the place after he started getting too sick to continue running it. As far as I know, she's never had any other similar incident with another woman, but she claims those feelings she had as a teenager have never gone away, and she's not sure what to make of it."

Rhiannon shook her head. Not once in all the time that she'd spend with Brenda would she have guessed that she was this way. Yes, she may have been a little broad shouldered and awkward with her mannerisms at times, but otherwise, there wasn't much about her that wasn't feminine. Was it always this hard to know who was a lesbian? And what did that say about her actual character? Was it possible that she was just as perverse as the homosexuals from those stories, or was it nothing more than some mild sexual disorder that might go away once she had more experience with men?

"Is there anything I should do about this, Penelope? Should I talk to her about it or is it best to stay quiet about it?" she finally asked.

"I would avoid bringing it up as long as you can. Don't tell the boys or anyone else you may interact with about it," Penelope responded. "I have my own morals about sex, but I see no reason for being hard on Brenda. She's a woman with good principles, unlike some the others who are the same way, and I'm sure she'd never do anything harmful to you or any other woman. Go on with your work with the band and grow as close as you can with everyone without any funny business going on. That's all I can say about it."

"Okay," Rhiannon said, still unsure how she felt about all this, but deciding it was probably best to go along with what Penelope said. Regardless of whatever Brenda was supposed to be, she still liked her so far, and was glad she'd come across someone who not only thought highly of her talents, but was also willing to work along with her so she could steadily improve over time.

"Well, what took so long, ladies?" Mitchell asked once they got back in the practicing room. "We were about to call Brenda to see if an emergency had come up."

"There's no emergency, Mitchell, unless you consider private talks over lady business to be an emergency," Penelope said with a sneaky smile.

Alex laughed. "I don't, but knowing most girls, perhaps you two do see it that way."

"Oh, be quiet, Alex," Rhiannon said. However, she couldn't be more thankful for the boys' playful teasing after what she'd just been talking about with Penelope. Being as young as she was in a time with strict sexual mores, she had yet to understand exactly what her manager was going through, or what all these people she'd been hearing so many bad things about were actually like.


End file.
